Restoring to Windows 7
I promise that this is my final post on my PC crash from last month. The point of this post is to give you my experience on what it is like restoring your Carbonite files from a previous version of Windows to the latest Windows 7.
The current and even previous versions of Carbonite are fully configured to work with Windows 7. When I performed my restore using Carbonite, I was really given two choices. Use the Remote Access service download the files I required for my immediate needs. Remote Access is accessible from any PC anywhere you have an internet connection. Remote Access is actually what you are given access to if you are using the mobile apps built for the iPhone or most recently for Android phones.
The alternate option you have is to do a full download of all of your files, that is a full restore. When I did my upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, my PC actually created a directory for me for my Vista files.
You can see this via the image below:
With my Vista C: drive created, when I attempted to Restore my full backup from Carbonite, the files where restored to their original place which is as you can see marked by the Carbonite green markers on my Vista C drive. Given Carbonite restored them here it also recognised them as backed up.
The challenge with Windows 7 however is that the My Documents equivalent is not where Carbonite restored them to. Now from memory, I don’t think I was given a choice of where to restore them to. You are however given a choice when you manually restore files from your backup drive.
So with my files safe on my Vista Drive, I knew at the very least that I had access to all of them and that Carbonite recognised them and was keeping its copy of them. The next challenge I had was how to move them and what would happen within Carbonite when I did. What I have always told customers is that when you do your restore, if the green Carbonite dots don’t automatically appear (give it a little while) then Carbonite has not recognised the files as the original files and you will need to back them up again.
If I cut and paste these files into a different directory Carbonite isn’t picking them up automatically. I can only assume this is due to the file structure changing significantly.
Its certainly something to be wary of as you move from one operating system to another. Carbonite will do its job to bring the files back for you but it will place them where they originally where, and if it can’t find this place it will select one of the C: for you. This is a fantastic result but then the challenge remains moving them around within your Windows 7 directory and ensuring that they are backed up.
For me, this will have to wait till Dec 1, when my new Optus data quota kicks in and allows me to back 500GB apparently. I can then back it all up again and not worry about over stepping my quota.
