Difficult Made Simple: Migration to Dissimilar Hardware

We often find ourselves confused and lost in this trendy innovative computing world.  We use new words, technologies and “innovation” to make computing life much more difficult than it has to be. This was my thought when I started a set of blog posts simply describing new computing trends and technologies. Here is another technology that I would like to simplify – Migration to Dissimilar Hardware.

Something that happened to me recently and may probably happen to any car driver – the Check Engine light came on suggesting a service checkup. There are lots of things that you’d be happy to hear from the mechanic in this situation – something like “The gas cap was loose” or “The wire fell off”. But what happens if it is an overheated or seized engine, something non-repairable or imminent to fail? 

The same happens with computers – due to extended use, they start malfunctioning or simply stop working, forcing you to look for a replacement and think of ways to migrate your operating system and data from that old computer to a new one. Consider this the same as installing everything you liked in your old car, including the steering wheel and radio, to a new one.

This in turn becomes complicated, as the computer you are going to buy will most likely have a significantly different configuration – let’s assume you are making an upgrade, so after seven years with that Honda Civic, you are now looking at a more family-oriented CRV. The configurations make it near impossible to just install your best features. The same for computers, just copying everything from one hard drive to another will not work. Your operating system uses software drivers to communicate to your hardware and those drivers are hardware-specific. I bet that new configuration you get as a replacement will have a different motherboard, hard drive and CPU – with current computing trends new configurations appear weekly (if not daily), making it almost impossible to buy same computer model or make. 

So how do you solve this? Re-installing everything from scratch is one option, but it may take several precious days. Another option could be disk cloning solutions that are offered by multiple vendors out there. But cloning is similar to copying, it does not handle the drivers issue that again results in the new computer being unbootable upon cloning.

Instead you may onboard a solution to migrate your system to dissimilar hardware. At Acronis, we have a special module called Acronis Universal Restore, this technology handles all issues with the drivers during migration and makes sure your Windows or Linux operating system, applications and data are safely moved from one computer to the next and remain 100% functional.

What would you do to prevent your car engine from failing? First, you definitely need to follow a regular maintenance schedule. Then you can probably get an extended warranty to make sure you get a replacement if something breaks down. In a similar way, you may protect your data from a failure by backing it up and then migrating it to the new computer with Acronis Universal Restore. This way you are prepared for when that service light comes on and can keep enjoying everything you liked about your old computer no matter what happens.

Learn more about Universal Restore by visiting the Acronis website.