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Migrating to New Computer

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I'm getting a new computer the 31st of this month. The new computer is an Acer AM3450-UR30P PT.SHDP2.001 Desktop PC. My old computer is a Systemax Ascent HA3700 RTS PC. My old computer has been running Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit since it came out. The new one has Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and a lot different hardware. I was told that Acronis True Image Home 2012 with plus pack can migrate to the new computer if I keep the 32 bit Windows. Is this true and how do you do it? I make backups every day with Acronis and also Windows 7.

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You will need the drivers of your new motherboard (disk controller) in their INF format (not ZIP and not EXE). Store them on an external USB disk that you will use also to store your backup. Pick the disk controller for the SATA/RAID mode that you will use on your new motherboard.

Make sure your ACronis recovery CD has been created after you have installed the Plus Pack.

Boot your computer on the Acronis recovery CD, make sure that the CD sees only one volume if you have a RAID setup. If it sees 2 separate disks for the RAID, see note below. Do a disk and partition backup of the entire system disk to the external USB disk.

Set up the BIOS of your new motherboard to the SATA/RAID mode you want and have the drivers for. Create the RAID if this is the choice.

Boot your new motherboard on the Acronis recovery CD. If this is a RAID setting, make sure the CD sees only one volume. If it sees 2, this won't work (see note below). Choose restore whole disk and partitions, activate UR and point ATI at the folder where you stored the drivers when requested.

If the new disk is of a different size, restore one partition at a time, in the same order they were before. Do not resize any partition except the C:\System partition or any user created partition. Mark the right partition active. Do not change drive letters along the way. No need to reboot in between.

If you restore to an SSD, leave a 1MB offset before the first partition, and make sure that each partition has a whole number of MB as size. This will aligne your disk.

Note: if the CD doesn't the RAID as one volume, you have to create a WINPE-based recovery CD. Follow the help file to do that. Note that if your motherboard is very recent, it is possible that the disk controller drivers are not included in the Windows toolkit. Then it becomes a tad more complicated to insert the drivers in the Wind-PE image.