Migrating to a new Machine – preserve backup and history

Once you have moved all the data that you want over onto the new machine, we can proceed with 'adopting' the old identity.  

After I brief you and you proceed to cutover the GUID, a number of your previous file selection paths that were valid on the previous system may now have the term MISSING beside them.  DO NOT REMOVE THESE SELECTIONS YET.  

Your online archive contains all the many versions of all your files that are selected for protection.  The key to this remaining intact is that they have been, and remain, 'selected'.  Bearing in mind that ours is a "backup" service and not an "archive" service, when your backup set on our servers is  submitted for the periodic maintenance and retention review we ensure that all versions of the currently selected files are reviewed and pruned in accordance with the retention settings.  If your backup set is full of files that are no longer present in the valid paths, or if you deselect the invalid paths from your list - either of those - then the logic establishes that you either no longer have, or no longer care to protect, those files.  Ergo, they are pruned immediately and permanently from your archive.  Ergo, make sure all your data from the archive is on the machine before adopting, OR ensure the path from the old machine will not be valid on the new machine AND don't deselect those "missing" selections.

Please review the steps below very thoroughly before taking any action.  To be certain, this GUID adoption process does contain risk to your online archive if not executed carefully. If you have any questions as you read it through, please do not proceed and just reach out for clarification.

So, with that in mind - here is the adoption process, to be executed AFTER the data transfer has completed:

1) ensure that CrashPlan is either uninstalled from the old machine or that it's been formatted, or talk to us about assigning it a new GUID. This step is critical because you certainly don't want two machines being online, each reporting to be the same 'unique' GUID... bad for success.

2) on the new machine, install and open our CrashPlan software.  Even before signing in with the existing account, double click on the background backup logo (top right); you should get a white command line at the bottom of the application window.

3) on this command line, enter the following text (I am specifying your exact GUID below; this is unique to this instance of this task. Never recycle this text.)

GUID nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn,restart

4) CrashPlan will flash back to a new user window, then collapse/quit.  This is on purpose, as we are restarting the underlying daemon after assigning it the new (old) GUID.  Relaunch the CrashPlan application, and then proceed to log in with the same account that you used for the original computer .

5) adjust and verify that your file selections capture all the data that you want protected; the paths can be different, the drive letters can be different - shake it up like a snow globe if you want... if it's the same data, we'll figure that out wherever it is.  Here's the self control moment - do not deselect any of the MISSING paths until the status bar has worked it's way back up to