Migrating the software installation and settings to another computer
I just moved the True Image installation from an older Win 7/32 computer to a new Win 7/64 computer. I also exported/imported the settings, completed product activation and confirmed that the backup destination is correct.
I am backing up essentially the same data.
Is there anything I need to do to make sure this all works correctly?
I do not know where Acronis stores the record of what's been backed up before, but if there is a disaster, I certainly would like to be able to restore data that was originally backed up by the old machine.
Robert,
If you exported the tasks and then imported them to the new machine all should be fine, so long as you are imaging to the same disk as you were before.
However, as you have changed from Windows 32 to 64 bit, your old images are now of no use to you apart from accessing data or files that might be needed. I would suggest making a new task so that you have a new full containg the 64 bit system. Obviously give the image a new name as well.
To answer your subsequent question, how many incrementals do you have and do they all belong to the same full image?
How much free space is there on your destination drive, and how much space is your current archive taking up?
The destination drive is 1.5Tb and it's about 80% to 90% full. My source is roughly 1/3. How do I prune old backups without risking cutting out too much?
To my original question, with import/export settings, how will the software detect which files do not require backup? I'm running a manual backup now and files that have not been touched are being backed up.
The fact that you are using a new machine means Acronis will not be able to continue with the backups as if nothing has happened.
If performing a disk/partition backup, the files themselves are not backed up, but the data sectors on the hard disk that contains them is.
Since you have moved to a new system, all the used data sectors on the disk would be considered "new".
Are you performing a file/folder backup or a disk/partition backup?
When was the last full (not the incrementals) backup of the old machine done?
When was the last incremental backup done of the old system?
How many incremental backup files have been created since the full backup was created?
Have you validated the backup files?
If you have data in your old backup files that you may want to get to in the future, you could restore the data files/folders to a temporary folder on your new system (into a new empty folder), and then create a new file/folder backup of just those files, then delete the temporary folder (after validating the backup image). You then could delete the older backup files that were from the older system as these will no longer be needed.
I'm actually performing a file/folder rather than a disk/partition backup. Most of the source files are located on a physical drive (Drive D) which I moved from the old computer to the new one.
I don't know when I performed the last full backup. Now that you raise the question, that's probably why my backups have grown so large. How do I find this out, and how can I condense things down a bit?
I could delete all my backups and start from scratch, but that's not my first choice. My original question remains -- how do you migrate from one computer to another without having to start all over?
It is not going to be easy to consolidate the size of your archive with your current setup.
What you need to achieve is consolidation of all or some of your incrementals. The problem is you need enough free space to do this, which is roughly the size of the archive/files you wish to consolidate plus the same amount again. This is because TI has to remake the archive into its new form before deleting the files no longer needed.
Within True Image right click on the task and select consolidate versions. You might need to browse for backups in order to populate the TI database.
If your archive was started by TI 2013, the file name will show you which backups are full and which are incremental by the fact it will have Full or INC in the name. If the archive was started using an earlier version of TI, then you'll need to judge by file size.
As we are now talking files and folders rather than disk/partition images the answer is slightly different.
1. It still best to make a new task and leave the old archive alone.
2. So long as the same disk is being used as the destination disk, you can still recover your folders and files. Making backups might fail as the disk idenitier has probably changed with a new install of Windows. The easy way to find out is to run your existing (imported) task, be prepared though for TI to make a Full version of the backup as all the disk sectors will have changed so to TI it will be a brand new backup, just using the old file name.
3. You might find yourself locked out of files and folders that you recover - one clue to this is that Windows Explorer will report the files as zero in size or will tell you you don't have permissions to access the file. This will be because the SSID of the files in the backup will not match the new SSID of your new install. If you find that does happen you need to, using Windows, change all the files in the recovered file or folder to use the new SSID, this is done under the security tab of each folder after right clicking on the folder and selecting properties.