Article ID: kb00220Last Modified: 16-Oct-2026

Restore Desktop OS As EC2 Instance

Situation

Amazon EC2 is a virtual cloud compute engine that runs instances with various operating systems.

CloudBerry Backup restores directly to an EC2 instance.

Many of our customers ask us, “Is it possible to restore my Windows 7, or my Windows 8, or another OS as an EC2 instance?” And the answer is yes.

Follow the steps below and spin up your desktop OS in the cloud.

Solution

  • Before you begin, you should be aware of some limitations and steps without which it would be impossible to import your desktop OS to the AWS environment:

  • Don’t forget about the VMimport role in your AWS account

  • VM Import/Export supports importing Windows instances with the following file systems: MBR-partitioned volumes that are formatted using the NTFS file system and GUID-Partition-Table-partitioned volumes are not supported

  • Your Windows instance should be BIOS-booted. Currently, the Amazon EC2 service doesn’t have an option to enable UEFI booting of instances

  • During the restoration process you must select the “Create an AMI (Amazon Machine Image)” option. It will create an AMI in your AWS account before launching an EC2 instance

Restore Your Windows7/Windows8/Windows10 as EC2

On the main toolbar, click Restore, select “Restore as Amazon EC2 Instance” and don’t forget to select the “Create AMI (Amazon Machine Image)” checkbox.

Alternatively, you can just click

Restore to EC2

on the main toolbar.

Specify your target EC2 instance details

Once your EC2 Instance is restored, you can check created AMI and your restored virtual machine in your AWS account.

Conclusion

Now you can restore not only server versions of OS as EC2 with CloudBerry, but also Windows 7/Windows 8/Windows 10. CloudBerry always tries to fit the latest updates in the cloud world. According to the AWS documentation, you can use a number of operating systems that can be imported to EC2.

This article concerns Desktop OS versions. The restore was tested on: Windows7(x64), Windows8(x64), and Windows10(x64).

Just don’t forget that:

  • Your system must be BIOS booted
  • Your volumes must be MBR-partitioned
  • You must choose the Create an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) option. Otherwise, you will get “ClientError: Unsupported Windows OS”.

Download CloudBerry Backup and give it a try!

Contact Us