BMR either restores or imports disks during a restore, as follows:

• To restore a disk means that BMR formats the disk and restore files to it. No attempt is made to retain any data on the disk.

• To import a disk means that BMR tries to reuse the volumes on it (that is, mount the file systems after restore). BMR tries to reuse rather than format the disk and restore files to it.

BMR always restores the system disk. For other disks, the following two options on the Prepare to Restore Client dialog box control BMR behavior:

• Restore system disks/volumes only.

  If you select this option, BMR restores only the system disk. Otherwise, BMR tries to import (reuse) non-system disks that are based on the disk class and the following option. System disk is defined as the following:

  • On AIX and HP-UX, the root volume groups (rootvg and vg00) are restored.

  • On Solaris, all disks that have any of the root file systems (/, /swap, /var, /usr) are restored.

  • On Windows, all disks that have %SystemRoot%, %SystemBoot%, and %TEMP% are restored. On Active Directory servers, BMR also restores the disks that contain the Active Directory system, database, and log files.

  • On Linux, all disks that have /, usr/, /usr/local, /var, /opt, /tmp, and /boot are restored.

• Make available volumes on non-restored disks after the system is restored.

  If you select this option, BMR imports the disks. Otherwise, the action depends on the disk class.

  See How BMR processes disk classes with prepare-to-restore options.

The following are the disk classes:

• System disks contain the operating system files that are required to boot the system.

• Nonsystem disks are all other disks, as follows:

  • Restorable disks are visible in the temporary restore environment and therefore can be restored. Visible means locally attached.

  • Nonrestorable disks are not visible in the temporary restore environment and therefore cannot be restored. Typically these are SAN devices. You may not know that these disks cannot be restored until you attempt a restore. If these disks are required for a restore, you are forced to do a dissimilar disk restore (DDR).

  • Shared disks are shared with another system using clustering software. The client may not control them during or after the restore.

  • Missing disks may or may not have been used and are no longer attached to the system. These disks are in the restore configuration. More information is available about the actions to perform for missing disks.

    See How BMR processes disk classes with prepare-to-restore options.

  • New disks are attached to the system in previously unused locations and used by any volume or any volume group. New disks are not in the original configuration.