Systems and methods for efficient backup restoration

Disclosed are systems and methods restoring a computing system. The described method includes emulating a virtual disk using a backup of the computing device and generating an ancillary virtual machine (VM). The method includes determining and writing, to a delta disk linked to the virtual disk, configuration modifications to the ancillary VM that enable booting of the ancillary VM using the virtual disk on a different device with dissimilar hardware as the computing device. Responsive to receiving a request to perform recovery of the computing device, the method comprises restoring the backup by creating on the different device a recovery virtual machine (VM) having a base virtual disk emulated from the backup, and modifying the recovery VM by attaching the delta disk having the configuration modifications.