How to perform initial seeding?

  1. Make sure you have activated an Acronis Backup & Recovery Online subscription on the machine where you will do initial seeding. If you are currently using a trial subscription, make sure 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.
  2. Decide on the media that you will send.
  3. 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.
  4. Start Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5, click Create backup plan and create a backup plan on this machine:

    The backup starts immediately after you click the final OK.

  5. [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.
  6. Package the media along with a prepaid return shipping label and send it to Acronis by physical mail. The address is available on your account management Web page > Initial Seeding / Recovery tab > Orders in process > Initial Seeding orders > Datacenter address.
  7. On the same Web page, mark the order as "shipped" and track the order status.
  8. Once you observe that the backup has been uploaded on the online storage, you can edit the backup plan to do incremental backups:

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