Crashplan Restore

Here's the scenario - you've read the previous post and installed the Crashplan stuff.  Several weeks pass, and everything has ticked along nicely.  Your backup is sat there with many gigs of data on a remote drive.  Vista "does its thing", so you decide it's time for the bi-annual reinstall of the OS.

When you install Crashplan again, alas it gives you a new 'identity' and reports that you've got a whole pile of stuff to backup.  Grrr.  It's my only complaint so far with the software - there's no easy way to tell it that this is just a reinstall and that it really doesn't have to start from scratch.

Fortunately, there is a way.  Add the following key to your registry before installing Crashplan:

HKLM\Software\CrashPlan\Identity

In there, add the following values:

• email, REG_EXPAND_SZ, [your email address]
• guid, REG_EXPAND_SZ, [your Crashplan machine guid]
• orgName, REG_EXPAND_SZ, "CrashPlan"

If you don't know your Guid, whoever you're backing up to will be able to tell you from their CrashPlan UI.

After that, install CrashPlan and it should work out who you are.  It worked for me :)

BTW, if you're on Vista64, the reg key needs to be HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\CrashPlan\Identity.  That took a few minutes to work out :)