To restore the system to dissimilar hardware is also called 'recover to dissimilar hardware'. It means to restore a complete Windows system backup to a dissimilar hardware configuration. When you need to replace failed hardware and couldn't find an exact device match for your original system specifications, you should do this job. This page will offer you a reliable backup and restore software and shows you how to restore to dissimilar hardware with a step by step guide shown below. Hope it is helpful!

When and why do you need to restore the system to dissimilar hardware

1. Migrate/transfer system to a dissimilar computer

Trying to transfer your current system to a dissimilar computer with all programs and installed applications saved on your system C: drive. To recover to dissimilar hardware is just an efficient way for you to migrate the current system to dissimilar hardware with all necessities saved on the system partition.

2. Instant recovery of a failed system on different hardware (computer)

When one of your computers crashes with a failed system, to create a system backup from a healthy computer and restore to the dissimilar hardware will bring your dead computer back to life.

3. Prevent motherboard failure

No matter which operating system you use, there is still a risk of motherboard failure. With this special feature for restoring the system to dissimilar hardware, there will be no trouble for you to replace a hardware computer without motherboard failure issue.

How to recover to dissimilar hardware? Let a third-party backup software help

Frankly speaking, it is hard to restore to dissimilar hardware with Windows Restore feature. The key factor is that the hardware-dependent Microsoft Hardware Abstraction Layer drivers are embedded with the system's image.

Therefore, you need to try a professional backup software with recover to dissimilar hardware feature to assist you to restore the system to different hardware.

Here, EaseUS Todo Backup, a professional Windows backup utility with System Transfer function, is a second-to-none choice for you. It allows you to easily and safely restore your system to dissimilar hardware.

Here is the detailed guide for system dissimilar recovery between computers:

Step-by-step Guide: Transfer/Restore system to dissimilar hardware/computer in 5 steps

Note: Before restoring the system image to dissimilar hardware or any PC, please ensure you have an image of the Windows operating system.

Let's see how can you recover to a dissimilar hardware computer with OS and C drive installed programs now:

Step 1. Create an emergency disk on a healthy computer

To save your time and energy, we'd like to suggest you create an emergency disk to a USB or external hard drive rather on a healthy computer with EaseUS Todo Backup.

1. Connect an empty USB flash drive or external hard drive with over than 100GB space to your PC.

2. Run EaseUS Todo Backup and click "Tools > Create Emergency Disk".

3. Choose USB as the disk location to create the emergency disk which will help you boot computer when it fails to boot or restore the system to dissimilar new PC.

4. Click "Proceed".

Step 2. Create a Windows system image backup for restoring to dissimilar hardware

1. Run EaseUS Todo Backup on the healthy computer and click "System Backup" on the left pane.

2. Choose the Windows OS and specify the USB flash drive which contains the emergency disk as the destination disk to save system image.

If you are worried about data loss issue by saving the system image to the emergency disk drive, you may also save system backup to another empty external hard drive with over 100GB free space.

This will help you create a full backup of the whole Windows system and all installed programs, applications on your C drive to the selected device.

3. Click "Proceed" to start creating a system backup image to the target device.

Step 3. Boot the dissimilar hardware/computer from EaseUS Todo Backup emergency disk

1. Connect the USB flash drive or external hard drive with emergency disk and system backup image to the new computer.

2. Restart PC and press F2/F8 to boot into BIOS.

3. Change boot drive and set the computer to boot from the EaseUS Todo Backup emergency disk.

Then you'll enter EaseUS Todo Backup main interface.

Step 4. Transfer and recover the system to dissimilar hardware or new computer

1. On EaseUS Todo Backup main window, click "System Transfer".

2. Select the system image on your drive and click "OK" to continue.

3. Specify the disk to save system image and tick "System Transfer" in Advanced options, click "OK" to save changes.

Then click "Proceed" to start transferring system and even some installed programs on system C: drive to the new hardware computer now.

Step 5. Restart PC with transferred system

1. Change boot sequence in BIOS to set the computer to boot up from the drive with the transferred system.

2. Save all changes and restart your computer.

3. Update all drive drivers and programs to ensure all things will work just fine on the new computer.

PLUS: Windows Reactivation Requests

If your computer asks you to reactivate the system after restoring or transferring to a new computer with dissimilar hardware, you can refer to provided resolutions here below for a guide: