Recovering MD devices and logical volumes

Recovering MD devices and/or volumes created by Logical Volume Manager (logical volumes) assumes that the corresponding volume structure will be recreated.

In Linux-based bootable media, you can choose to recreate the volume structure automatically.

This functionality is intended primarily for bare-metal recovery of an entire machine. The software backs up and recreates the entire logical volume structure, even if not all MD devices or logical volumes are being backed up or recovered. Therefore, you need at least as many disks as the original volume structure used.

Do not try to recreate the volume structure automatically in any of the following cases:

• The machine has data that must be preserved. The software will destroy all data on the disks that it chooses to recreate the volume structure on.
• The machine has fewer physical disks than the original volume structure used. The software will fail to recreate the volume structure even if the capacity of the physical disks is enough to fit all the data being recovered.
• The backup does not contain the volume structure information. This information might be absent in backups created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, because saving it was optional.

In these cases, create the volume structure manually prior to recovery. You can do this by using the mdadm and lvm utilities, either in Linux-based bootable media or in Linux.