Exchange external disk
Hi all,
I want to exchange my current external storage disk for a bigger one.
How do I best proceed in order to keep my current backups?
Regards,
Clemens


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Hi Steve,
many thanks for your reply.
What do you mean by "cloning" my tasks, exactly? (I have four backup tasks currently) I understand its not the clone function that makes any drive bootable and that's not exactly what I need.
BTW I have the German version so I will have to try and find what the equivalent in my version is.
Kind regards,
Clemens
W7, Acronis 2015
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Hi Clemens, see the screen shot below showing the option to Clone settings for your backup task.
Click on the (V) icon to the right of your task name, then select Clone settings from the drop-down menu shown.
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Hi Steve, great, thanks.
So having cloned, it will be sufficient then to simply copy the content of the old drive to the new drive in order for Acronis to find previous backup versions?
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Hi Clemens, if you use a new name for the cloned task then this will start a new set of backups based on your configuration setting in the folder that you specify for your destination drive. If you remove the original source settings and rename the cloned task to the old name, then it will continue backups with that name, so should find that there are existing files in the folder.
Personally, I would recommend going for a new name and keep your old backup files in their original folder, starting a new folder for the new task, as this will also set new information in the Acronis Database to record history data, whereas if you keep the old name, you may end up with some files overwriting the old backup files or given them a v1-2 type suffix.
ATIH will still add in your existing backup files to the list of Tasks / you can still open these via Explorer / or if they are not added automatically you can use the option at the bottom (V) icon menu to Add existing backup files.
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Hi Steve,
o.k. I will keep the old backups on the old drive (for a while, at least).
But then, I will have two backups running, one to the old drive and one to the new one. Deleting the old task from the task list might make the backups inaccessible...
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Clemens, you can still keep the old backups on the old drive without needing to keep running the task that created them. These would become an extra level of backup security, especially if the drive is kept disconnected, so not at any risk of attack from malware, encryption / ransomware etc.
You cloned, new task will write further backups to the new drive and you can continue with these until such time as you may want to repeat the swap again, or clean the old drive and use it for separate backup tasks which don't need as much storage space etc.
Deleting the old task from the list is only removing the settings for the task, not the backup files on the drive, provided that you do not select to delete everything! You can access the files on the drive via Explorer, explore them or mount them, or else you can recover them using the Acronis Rescue Media etc.
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Hi Steve,
I'm afraid I'm getting in trouble.
While my first full backup of my main drive c: worked well, I deleted it as it went to the root of the new drive. I wanted to put the backup in a dedicated folder. But now, when creating a fresh backup task, it remains queued forever. Maybe I'll have to contact acronis directly.
Many thanks for your support so far
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Clemens, if you are seeing your backup task in queued status then you have another task which is active, as only one backup task can ever be active at a time.
Download the Acronis Scheduler Manager program from KB document: https://kb.acronis.com/SchedulerManager - run the schedmgr.exe program as Administrator - this will open a Windows command prompt type window.
In the new window, type task zap and this will clear all queued / scheduled tasks and should allow you to then run your new backup task and set a new schedule for this as needed.
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Hi Steve,
meanwhile, I upgraded to 2017, and the backup is running fine now. Thanks for all your help and hints!
Clemens
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Clemens, thanks for the update, glad things are working for you.
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