Is is possible to move existing HA installation to a new machine?

Installation
1

I want to update my hardware and migrate to a new machine. Is this possible without starting all over again? And is there a procedure to do this? Thank you.

2

Yes

Procedure depends on install method but it’s basically either

HAOS
Install on new hardware as default. Restore backup

DOCKER
Install on new hardware as default. Stop container. Replace config folder with config from original system. Verify group:user of folder is correct. Start container

EDIT
Best to use same version for new install to reduce breaking change causing confusion. Update after restore and verify working

3

Backup and restore. Worked like a charm for me migrating from an rpi to a nuc. If you can assign the original ip to the new system it is even kore seamless (I had to change a few settings).

4

So simple to do assuming HAOS to HAOS on the new machine. I did it in half hour a couple months ago.

  1. Do a full backup of the data on old computer. using Setting → System → Backups. Obviously this backup should be to a USB or network drive. Shut down old computer.
  2. Install HAOS on the new machine. Move coordinators to the new machine. Log into the new machine with homeassistant.local or whatever the new IP is :8123. It will recognize it is a new installation, ask if you wish to restore.
  3. Restore data from backup.
  4. Once restored, I had to do 2 things. First, I changed the static IP of the new machine to match the static IP of the old machine. Second, I found that the location in Settings → System → Storage didn’t get set properly to my Synology box, so I set that.
  5. Reboot

And that was it.

5

First, super helpful, thanks harryfine!
Second, I had to reconnect Withings but HA walked me through the process.
Third, when you are fixing the BIOS for HA (UEFI on, Secure Boot off), remember to set restart after a power failure, which on Beelink is both buried in the menus and non-mnemonic, changing a random setting from S5 to S0) so you don’t have to do it later when you don’t have access to a screen.
Fourth, one thing I didn’t expect is that the backup does not need to be on the new HA PC. I back up to Synology and connected to the new HA PC on my laptop, put the most recent full backup from Synology in my downloads folder and then HA uploaded it from my laptop to the new HA PC. That was much easier than I expected. (HA is such a thing of beauty!)
Finally, I upgraded from a Raspberry Green to a N100 PC mainly to shave a few seconds off loading my standard dashboard and it does seem to have accomplished that purpose. My standard dashboard has 15 menus and hundreds of buttons, with ~75 IoT devices and over 2000 entities in my system. What used to take 5 seconds on my phone now takes 2-3, which is including the app loading and web traffic.

6

I’m migrating to a Bare Metal HAOS installation this weekend. I can’t wrap my head around the restore process. I have backups on my existing hardware (HA Blue) as well as Google Drive (via the HA add-on). How do I do a restore on a new machine? Do I need to download the backup from Google on a thumb drive? Or do I need to create a “new” home, install the Google drive add-on and then do a restore? I guess I’m just not understanding how the new machine knows where to find the backup.

7

HA will look for a folder on the local system. you will need to save it where HA can see it.

Basically, install HAOS as default. After that, when you go to restore it will likely make sense as you will see where it can look for files. At that point you can move the file to that folder or provide HA access by some other means.

8

Hi, I’m planning to move HAOS from a RPi4 to a RPi5.
HOAS is running from a 256GB SSD connected by USB.
The new device will have a smaler 128GB SSD connected by PCIe port.

Now I was reading here in the docs that the new drive needs to have more free space then the old one for restoring. So this means, the drive from the new device needs to be bigger. (?)

The target device must have more free space than the source device.

My drive has less then 30GB in use, so the 128GB SSD would be big enought.

How could I manage to do the restore to the smaler drive?
Is it possible to shrink the used partition? Or what would be a possible way to go?

9

anybody a hint or advice?

10

give it a try and see what happens.

honestly a lot of the backup is just a direct copy of the config folder I believe. With that you can basically copy paste and fix whatever is missing.

So I would just do the normal restore and if that didnt work I would copy/paste/fix

I dont use HAOS so I dont have good understanding of backup/restore process. I have never had to do it any only read the docs. End of day, try it and see what happens.

11

thank you, I will have a try, when the m2-hat with the new ssd arrives.

12

Today I moved my HAOS to a RPi5 with a smaller ssd on m.2-hat.
It was working without any problems.

  • flashed with Pi-Imager to ssd (putted into a ssd to usb case)
  • ssd set into m.2 hat
  • boot
  • load backup file

I’m freaking out because the bloody settings for adding samba share to storage.
That’s the only thing not restored from backup and I don’t know how to set the path right. Last time I had the same problem… :angry:
…got it… :nerd_face: