VM Restore without Proper Backup In Place

Question

VM Restore without Proper Backup In Place

Ben Morris 0

Hi there, is there a way that Microsoft can restore a VM without any backup policy being in place, even a week ago would be OK. Unfortunatley someone did something to a VM and I want to get it back to an old state.

Bharath Y P 7,080 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-27T16:44:29.1966667+00:00

Hello Ben Morris, I just wanted to kindly follow up to check, If the provided answer is helpful, it would be great if you could accept the answer and up-vote. This helps other community members who might face the same issue. Thanks
Yutaka_K_JP 1,570 Reputation points

2026-03-29T01:43:03.13+00:00

I think azure keeps no earlier state, so w/o a backup or snap there’s nothing to restore; just check the RG for any older disk u can rebuild from.
Naveena Patlolla 9,310 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-01T16:14:34.02+00:00

Hi Yutaka_K_JP
Microsoft cannot restore the Azure VM without a backup or snapshot. Could you please provide the details requested via private message so we can proceed with further investigation?

1 answer

Your answer

Bharath Y P 7,080 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-27T16:44:29.1966667+00:00

Hello Ben Morris, I just wanted to kindly follow up to check, If the provided answer is helpful, it would be great if you could accept the answer and up-vote. This helps other community members who might face the same issue. Thanks
Yutaka_K_JP 1,570 Reputation points

2026-03-29T01:43:03.13+00:00

I think azure keeps no earlier state, so w/o a backup or snap there’s nothing to restore; just check the RG for any older disk u can rebuild from.
Naveena Patlolla 9,310 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-01T16:14:34.02+00:00

Hi Yutaka_K_JP
Microsoft cannot restore the Azure VM without a backup or snapshot. Could you please provide the details requested via private message so we can proceed with further investigation?

Answer 1

Hello Ben Morris, Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Q&A platform.

You have an Azure VM that was modified or damaged, and you want to restore it to its previous state, ideally from a week ago. No backup policy, snapshots, or recovery mechanism were in place for this VM.

Microsoft cannot restore an Azure VM to a previous state if no backup or recovery mechanism existed at that time. Azure does not keep automatic historical copies of VMs. Recovery is only possible if some form of data protection already existed, such as backups, snapshots, restore points, or replication. If none of these were in place, rollback to an earlier state is not possible.

Under some specific conditions, Azure VM team might be able to recover disks. Please engage Azure VM team as they can verify if it's possible to recover the disks depending on their particular situation.

Managed disks in a soft deleted state can now be recovered. A managed disk will be in a soft deleted state if:

The disk was created more than 10 days prior to deletion.
The disk was deleted less than 4 days (96 hours) ago.
Ultra Disk and Premium SSDv2 are not supported in any state, either Soft Delete or Hard Delete Recovery.

If the VM’s managed disks still exist, you can create a new VM from those disks to attempt data recovery. However, this does not restore the VM to an earlier image or configuration state.

Find and delete unattached Azure managed and unmanaged disks - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn

Restore Azure Managed Disks - Azure Backup | Microsoft Learn

Without backup, snapshots, or available disks, there is no native option in Azure to recover the VM to a previous point in time.

To avoid data loss, it is strongly recommended to enable Azure Backup immediately on any critical VMs and regularly verify backup health and restore capabilities.

Hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any queries.

Thanks,

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VM Restore without Proper Backup In Place

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