Universal Restore?
I have been backing up my systems for 4-5 years now using Acronis and have come to a time where my very complex observatory computer is in dire need of upgrading the mother board and processor. I've watched a number of videos that kinda explain the process and many posts describing the procedure but have yet to get the confident feeling of exactly how to do this procedure. Is there an easy step by step, well explained procedure described anywhere that will walk a novice such as myself through this process? The computer has a ton of astronomy software with a ton of very specific settings allowing it to run both locally and remotely in an automated fashion. Everything from starting up the observatory equipment, connecting same and then focusing, plate solving and so on to take a series of images in good weather is doenon a regular basis so getting this right is something that should save at least a week of work if I have to manually go in and set everything back up from scratch. After all these years of backups it time to test this program and see if it can really do as promised and I'm hoping it can deliver as advertised.
Can someone point me in the right direction to use this procedure sucessfully? Once this is done I have a system at SRO Observatories taht I need to do the same except this will be a whole new system.
Thanks,
Steve
In addition to the comments posted by Enchantech, see post: 117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources which includes a link to a video on using Universal Restore.
You will need to be aware of Windows activation and licensing if you are moving from an OEM version of Windows - this is tied in to your current hardware and is not transferable to a new system (which a new motherboard and processor would represent).
Actually my versions go as far back as v9 but this system is running 2016. I have a Rescue Media I burned back in July that I just tested and it boots fine giving me a menu to choose from with the first two options of Universal Restore 32 and 64 bit. My system in question is a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM. I build all of my systems and have the MS Product key for each system. I haven't tried any of the observatory systems on Win 10 yet and will most liely not anytime soon. MS updates have interferred with way too many of the ones I do know of.
At this point I have two options:
Replace motherboard, RAM, and CPU
or use a spare sytem I built some time back. It has Win 7 Pro 64 installed but at this point I would perfer to transfer the system over wholly as it now exists in the observatory. The shear number of settings that must be set in each astronomy program is a ton of work and as is everything runs as smooth as clockwork so transferring it over is most appealing. The other computer in question is about 4 years newer and completely different other than the use of SSDs. The old computer does have a SSD as primary boot drive also containing all of the programs. The main concern is transferring the C drive along with its programs and settings.
Where I ran into questions in the past werre the initial settings to do the actual needed backup for the Universal Restore. Making the Rescue Media was never an issue but the steps onward were confusing to me.
Steve,
I think that issue may be with systems from Win 8 and up or those built by Dell and others. All my systems have been self built and using OEM Windows version that came with product keys. Re-installing hasn't been an issue. With Win 8/10 especially I am aware as I went through this when repairing a desktop at my local volunteer rescue squad that we bought from Dell.
On an unrelated note, is there a way to turn on spell check? I've caught a few but can't say all.
Steve, the issue with OEM versions of Windows applies to all releases as far as I am aware - reinstalling with the product key to the same hardware should never be an issue, but installing on different hardware is. The OS is activated based on the hardware it is installed on, i.e. the motherboard and CPU primarily.
Windows 8/10 can be moved more easily providing that any new hardware already had an activated copy of the same OS installed, as then the restored OS will also activate based on that hardware.
Spell check in these forums is not an option as far as I am aware - there have been requests for this to be enabled in the MVP forums but nothing has come of these so far.
With regards to the procedure for using AUR, in essence, the steps that you will need to perform are:
- Make a full disk & partitions backup of your old Windows 7 system drive to an external drive - ensure that this includes all hidden & system partitions as these will be required for a successful restore.
- Using the Acronis Rescue Media, restore the drive backup to the new system. This may represent a challenge in itself depending on how different the new hardware is from the old hardware. You may need to match the disk controller mode used for both systems, plus also check what boot method is being used, you will have problems if the old one uses Legacy / MBR BIOS and the new uses UEFI with Secure Boot for example.
- After the backup is restored, don't attempt to boot into Windows, but shutdown and remove the external backup drive and Rescue media used for the restore. Then boot from the Acronis Universal Restore bootable media and allow this to prepare the restored Windows 7 OS to work on the new hardware. AUR will prompt you if it needs any additional device drivers for any of the new hardware, such as the disk controller or chipset drivers. If these are required, you should have a driver USB or CD available to point the AUR tool at.
So I'm probably in trouble already as I'm sure the new BIOS is Dual UEFI and the old is most likely Legacy. I'm checking Belarc for the specifics on each and I know the newer one has an Asus P8Z68-V PRO Rev 1.xx motherboard, 32 MBs RAM, and an i7-2600K CPU while the older on has a Gigabyte P35-DS3L mother board, 2.85 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU, and 8 MBs RAM and does not support Secure Boot but then neither systems do.
Steve Reilly,
The ASUS board being UEFI also supports Legacy\CSM mode boot. You would need to boot the board into the bios and make the boot mode Legacy/CSM before performing the restore. I am confident that your current installation is a Legacy MBR install.
ASUS does have updated drivers for this board albeit they are a bit dated. The board has an Intel series 6 chipset so for the Intel storage controller drivers grab the latest 12.x.xx.xxx drivers available from the Intel site for the best compatiblity. You can also download the latest Intel chipset drivers from the Intel site as well.
These drivers, chipset and storage controller drivers are the absolute necessary drivers to get the board to boot with the restored Windows image from your current machine.
your board supports a Marvell and a JMicron controller as well. You can install current drivers for those controllers after the machine boots. Having said that AUR might ask for those drivers which you can get of off the ASUS support site.
These drivers will come in either a .sys, .exe, or possibly a ,oem package. These are only containers for the driver files within. You will need a tool such as 7zip to extract the contents of these files and then place those files either on a seperate media for AUR or you can add them to the AUR build process, your choice.
Hope this helps.
Thanks and sorry for the late reply. I'll try this procedure later this weekend when I have a good block of time. Funny thing is I've always backed up my system but never had an instance where I needed to restore them. Very lucky I guess and very particual where I surf. If this works for me it will save a ton of time and headache. I guess I should do this at least once just to say I did.
Thanks again.
Steve