How do I perform initial seeding?

Preparing

1. Ensure that you have activated an Acronis Cloud Backup subscription on the machine where you will do initial seeding (skip this step if you have a volume subscription).
2. If you are currently using a trial subscription, ensure that you also have a paid subscription available and assigned to this machine. Do not use the Initial Seeding service if you do not have a paid subscription.
3. Decide on the media that you will send.
4. Choose the shipping company that you will use to ship your media. We strongly recommend that you use a recognized provider, such as UPS, FedEx, or DHL.

Creating the initial full backup

1. Attach the media to the machine you are going to back up. Alternatively, you can back up to a local or network folder and then copy/move the backup to the media.
2. Start Acronis Backup, click Create backup plan and create a backup plan on this machine:
   • Under What to back up, select disks, volumes or files/folders you want to back up.
   • Under Where to back up, specify Cloud Storage.
   • In Backup scheme, select Initial seeding. Specify the said media as the backup destination.
   • [Optional, but strongly recommended] Enable backup encryption in Backup options > Archive protection.

   The backup starts immediately after you click the final OK.

3. [Optional] If you want to add backups from another machine, attach the media to that machine and perform the same steps. You need a separate Initial Seeding license for each machine that you want to back up.

Packaging and sending

1. Package the media along with a prepaid return shipping label.

   Important  Carefully follow the instructions in the "How to package a hard drive for shipment?" section, to ensure that your hard drive is safely delivered and returned.

2. Send the media to Acronis by physical mail.
3. On your account management webpage, mark the order as "shipped" and track the order status.

Creating subsequent backups

Once you observe that the backup has been uploaded to the cloud storage, you can edit the backup plan to do incremental backups:

• In Backup scheme, select the desired backup scheme and specify its settings.
• Click Save.

When started manually or on a schedule, your backup plan will add incremental backups to the initial backup stored in the cloud storage.