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Boot-able media and Plus Pack

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I just upgraded to ATI 2012 and installed the Plus Pack for the first time.

I have a full drive backup (validated) and I want to use the Plus Pack to basically load this backup to a new machine. Both source and destination machines are running Win 7 64-bit.

Since the destination machine already has the OS running fine, do I still need to make yet another backup on boot-able media in order to move everything except the OS across? All the articles about doing this with the Plus Pack seem to indicate that I need to do a boot-able media backup to do this.

I was led to believe that if I upgraded and got the Plus Pack, then I could just take a back up and select exactly what files to move across. I'd basically like to move all data/source files to the new machine, but install most of the software (MS Office) from original disks. I plan to reinstall Windows on the source machine as soon as I see that it is mirrored to the new machine.

Thanks for any tips or articles to clarify. The backup is large and takes hours, and so I'm hoping that I can just use this existing backup rather than creating a new one with boot-able media.

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The "mount" images option is one option which will enable you to select files or folders and drag from the virtual drive backup onto you new computers. Check the user manual, section 8.8 for more details.

Thanks Grover,

That section is very helpful.

So let's say that I was starting from scratch (didn't already have this backup) and I want to essentially clone my source disk to the new machine, but NOT clone Windows 7 (leave the OS on the destination disk alone).

Is there a better way to do this rather than using the mount image -- even if I have to turn my external USB hard drive into boot-able media?

Really appreciate your expertise here.

The Acronis clone feature is not applicable as it is at disk level. The target disk would lose all its contents and the target disk would become a duplicate of the old disk.

You could achieve the capability to copy by creating a complete backup of your old computer and then using the Mount feature.

Or you could create a backup of only the files you want and then restore those files into new folders on the new computer.

http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ATIH2012/#7938.html

http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ATIH2012/#7937.html

Ok -- so the clone feature would replace the OS as well, makes sense.

I guess what I'm searching for here is that yesterday when I was telling Acronis support about the situation, where I essentially want to move the entire hard drive contents to a new machine, preserving directory structures, but without replacing the OS, they indicated that the Plus Pack would do exactly what I wanted, and so I upgraded.

Is the Mount feature only a feature of the Plus Pack? because what I'm looking for is that "perfect" Plus Pack feature that they were telling me about yesterday to do the above.

Thanks again for all your help on this -- really is helping me to sort this out.

The mount option is a feature of the regular program--not the plus pack.

The plus pack has two features:
1. The ability to create a special WiniPE bootable media which uses Windows drivers rather than the normal Linux drivers.
2. Restore to dis-similar hardware: As I understand this feature (which I have never used), the program gives the user the option to install drivers needed by the new hardware but the target disk becomes the same as the old except for it having new drivers for its video card, etc which is different from the old. I am under the understanding that the target disk loses its identity to become the old except with new drivers. Maybe someone else will respond.

Here is a link
http://kb.acronis.com/content/23561

Ok, this makes me wonder if the Acronis support person may not have understood the Plus Pack as well as you do since their statement was that it would allow me to graphically choose directories, software installs, etc and install those to the other machine without wiping out the OS. That seemed like a tall order, but I was taking them at their word.

I hope someone else who has used the Plus Pack might jump in and help us out here. I wouldn't mind experimenting, but to do another backup with boot-able media will take so many hours that I'd rather just know what I'm doing upfront rather than trial and error.

Maybe another option would be to clone the drive and allow the OS on the new machine to be overwritten and then install Win 7 from the new machine back on the old one. I'm going from a 250Gb drive to a 750Gb drive though.

In any case, thanks again for understanding the problem and posting your comments, Grover.

I've installed a trial version of ATI Home 2012 on the new machine and pointed it to the backup.

It seems that if I just do a Disk Recovery from here and tell it to NOT overwrite system files or folders, that would imply that it will clone my previous disk to the new one without overwriting the OS, right? Not seeing in the docs, though, what would happen to the registry in this case. I wouldn't want it to copy software (like Office) over to the other machine in such a way that I still couldn't run it OR uninstall it due to inconsistencies with the registry.