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NEWBIE - :{ Back up info

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Hi! sorry for the newbie question..  

 

I had to do a back up of the old ssd and a clean install on new ssd drive.. Now that I have a clean install and a backup of the old drive.. Im assuming I have to re install all software I.E. photoshop etc.. then drag and drop files over from the backup..

What does a backup really do? 

Im assuming its different from an " Clone " which didnt not work with windows 10 and the software. 

 

Thanks again for the help :}

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Josh White wrote:

I had to do a back up of the old ssd and a clean install on new ssd drive.. Now that I have a clean install and a backup of the old drive.. Im assuming I have to re install all software I.E. photoshop etc.. then drag and drop files over from the backup..
What does a backup really do? 
Im assuming its different from an " Clone " which didnt not work with windows 10 and the software. 

Josh, welcome to these user forums.

I need to ask some questions before knowing how best to advise you here.

What type of backup of your old SSD did you do?  
Was this using ATIH 2016 or using a different program or utility?

If you have an Acronis full disk & partitions backup of the old SSD then there should be no need to have done a clean install on your new SSD, as you should be able to restore your backup to that new drive and be back where you want to be.

An Acronis backup takes a snapshot in time of your source data that you select to include.  
With ATIH 2016 the source data can be the Entire PC, selected Disks & Partitions, or selected Files & Folders.
For an Entire PC or Disks & Partitions backup, this will be an exact copy of your disk drive including the full Windows OS and all Programs / Applications and User Data.

A 'Clone' is an identical copy of a Source disk drive (HDD or SSD) written to a Target disk drive (HDD or SSD) - the key with making a Clone copy of a disk drive is that this should always be done using the Acronis bootable Rescue media, totally outside of any Windows OS.

Please see: 117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources which may help with understanding more of how ATIH can be used in different scenarios.

Hi Steve, 

Thank you so much for the reply! Very helpful. 

I just purchased a new PNY 240gb ssd and used the Acronis 2015 software. 

So I did a full disk backup from the old drive with the 2015 Acronis and did a fresh install on the new drive. Now that I have the backup, I was curious If i need to re-install all my old programs. but Like you said, I could of just " restored the backup " on the new drive and been good to go. 

Thanks also for the tips and videos, i will be sure to take a look. 

Josh, a couple of further suggestions.

Now that you have a clean install on your new drive, I would suggest making a further backup of this before attempting to restore the backup from the old drive.  This will give you a recovery option to get back to where you are today without having to redo everything again if there are any problems.

You backups should be on an external disk drive that you can connect to your system when needed for restore.

The restore / recovery should only be done by using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media and not attempted from within the Windows application.  

See webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS as this is how you should boot the Acronis Rescue Media so that this matches how your Windows OS boots.  This is important to do a successfull recovery.

Josh White wrote:

[...] I was curious If i need to re-install all my old programs. but Like you said, I could of just " restored the backup " on the new drive and been good to go. 

If you restore your image, you will completely erase your fresh install, and replace it by the disk info that you backed up.

At the same time, you cannot just restore the programs. On the Windows platform, program installation is intertwined with system files, so you cannot just restore "program files".

So for all programs, you will have to reinstall them.

User Files, however, can be copied out the backup (pretty much any folder in the C:\Users\UserName folder, except the hidden folders.