Bare-metal restore is a technique in the field of data recovery and restoration where the backed up data is available in a form which allows one to restore a system from "bare metal", i.e. without any requirements as to previously installed software or operating system.

Dr. Steve Schwartz, founder of Unitrends, was the initial developer of bare-metal restore.

Typically, the hardware receiving the restore needs to be identical to the hardware that was the source of the backup.

Computer storage