[#1]

Hi all,

I have a new hard drive that I will be installing to replace my existing one. My existing one has Mozy installed and all my documents/files are backed up from that existing drive in the "my documents" location.

I'm wondering what strategy I should take in order to transition to the new hard drive. One of my main concerns is that I plan to have new login names and therefore the "My Documents" folder will have a different user parent folder names.

Also, does replacing the hard drive constitute a "replacing/new computer" from a Mozy perspective, such that would I need to tell Mozy that this is a new computer to replace on my account?

Should I just install the new drive (install the Windows OS on it) and then slave my existing drive and manually copy over all my "My Document" files that i want onto my new hard drive into the new user name documents folder? Then install Mozy on this new hard drive, configure it and let it go?

If I do the above, then I presume Mozy will begin to do a complete backup of all the files (again) because they will be in new user folder "my document" name. This backup will take days.

Does that seem like the best/only approach? 

I guess the alternative would be to install the new hard drive and then install Mozy and do a restore of everything from Mozy into my new user name "my documents" folder. But then is Mozy going to turn around and back them up because the files are now in new locations?

Thanks for any input.

Cheers,

Eric

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I would suggest inserting your hard drive and manually copying everything over from the other drive to the new user account.  That will be much faster than trying to download everything from the internet (the internet just isn't nearly as fast).

When you re-install mozy, it will be able to replace the old computer and tie the old backups to the new windows install. If it doesn't recognize the files as backed up, it will look like they aren't backed up but once the file gets encrypted it will be compared to what is on the server, and if it's already backed up, it will just mark it as backed up without having to re-upload it. It does take a little bit of time for the re-association but not nearly as long as uploading the files.

[#3]

Thanks, Mike. That's pretty clear and was the advice I was looking for,

Cheers,

Eric

[#4]

I am adding/replacing two new drives to one of my Mozy backed-up computers. For simplicity, all of my backed-up data is on the D:drive. In the process, I will also upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.

I plan to keep the computer name the exact same, copy the entire D:drive from old to new, and then re-install Mozy. I am hoping Mozy will notice that (a) the computer name is the same and (b) the files are the same.

My concern is that I have 190 GB of data. If the application decides to re-upload everything, it will take 4-6 weeks.

Is there any way to verify this plan will work? I hope to avoid the re-uploadingn delay.

Thanks,

Dave

[#5]

It won't re-upload those files unless they have a lot of patches (like you have changed the file like when a pst file gets a new email, the file changes). When the installer replaces the machine, it will tie all of the old information to the new install. If it doesn't recognize the files, it will encrypt them, then compare them to what is already on the server. If the file is already there, it will skip over the file and move on to the next without having to upload it. It's very smart. Like I said above though, you may have to re-upload some files like your email file because it may look different from the first file.

[#6]

Thanks for the posts above. I have a related question which fits here and I can't find specifically answered elsewhere.

When moving from XP to vista/windows7 the file locations are different (for example my user/documents/my music is just now under my user/mymusic). 

My question is - when asking mozy to replace a PC - does it look for the same files in different locations?

i.e. just because my music is stored in a different place will it know or have to back up again.

Many thanks

Stuart

[#7]

Hi Mike...

I am going through a similar situation. I bought a new laptop hard drive, installed the drive and Win 7 on the new drive, copied all the files from the old drive to the new one, and then reinstalled Mozy.

When I logged in it didn't recognize that I was using a new computer. I had to manually replace the computer with the new one (new drive, not new computer). Now, Mozy is trying to backup 190K files (about 300 gb). It is not recognizing that those files were previously backed up.

Can you help with this? I simly can't wait 4 weeks for the initial backup to happen again.

Thanks so much

[#8]

Hello

As an update - when this happened to me (see post above yours) I ended up calling mozy support after I received no reply on these forums.

The way it was explained to me is that it will look like it needs to back up a particular file but as soon as it checks its database it will realise it is backed up in the past and will not upload again. So although it says 4 weeks it will progressively get quicker as not all these files will need to be uploaded.

The support guy also said that mozy only ever keeps one copy of a file no matter how many users have that file. So if I back up a new song that happens to have been backed up by a different user it will not need to upload and the back up will be really quick. This seems a little scary on the privacy front (unless its all completely anonymous) but appears to be correct from my experience.

Hope this helps.

[#9]

---

Stuart wrote:

Hello

.... will not upload again.
~~~

---

Small files will always re-upload. Medium files will sometimes re-upload and sometimes not. Large files will not re-upload. The actual size of those files vary based on how busy the servers are. You can look at the history and see that some files that were uploaded before were uploaded again. You can sort the history by the "Other Details" and see the file size dividing medium and large.

[#10]

So to summarize moving a large amount of data from computer A to computer B, is this correct?

1. Locally Copy files from computer A to B

2. Install Mozy, then add computer B as a new computer in Mozy account

3. Allow Mozy to sync files on computer B. The files on computer B will not re-upload, just their status will be updated, unless the actual file contents have been changed.

4. Once files are synched, delete computer A

I wish that the FAQ would explain this scenario as it dies appear to be a common scenario and frequently asked. It reccomends a web restore which is not practical for large amounts of data- I have 150gb which would saturate my connection for many days and not allow me to use the files on the new computer until then.

davey