How to Migrate Home Assistant To Another Computer

In the video below, we show you how to migrate Home Assistant to another computer

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Overview:
We’ll backup Home Assistant on our original computer and then restore that backup onto another one

You do still have to install a fresh copy of Home Assistant onto the new computer, but this still saves us a lot of time

Build New Computer:
First install Home Assistant onto a new computer

All you need to do is to complete the initial installation and on boarding Wizard though so that you can then login and perform a restore

NOTE: The new computer needs to have a different IP address, at least to begin with, as you can’t have two computers on the same network with the same IP address

Also, make sure both computers are up to date, or at least running the same version of Home Assistant, Core and Supervisor if necessary, otherwise we could run into incompatibility problems

Backup Original Computer:
On the original computer we need to take a backup of Home Assistant

But first try to make sure everything looks to be working

If you don’t check you might spot a problem on the new computer, not realise this problem was always there and then try and revert back to the original computer, which just wastes time

To take a backup, navigate to Settings | System and then select Backups

Now click Create Backup

Provide a name for this backup then click Create and it will backup Home Assistant and store the file on the local storage

Once finished, click the backup file, then select the Menu option in the lower right

From that select Download backup

Pay attention to where this file gets saved to as you’ll need it shortly

Now shut down Home Assistant so you can use its IP address

This is especially important if you’re using the MQTT broker for instance and/or have firewall rules set up for this IP address

Restore Onto New Computer:
Update the new computer with the IP address of the original computer

If you’re using adaptors and/or controllers in Home Assistant you’ll also want to transfer these over to the new computer

Now restore the backup onto this computer

Navigate to Settings | System and then select Backups

Click the menu in the top right corner and select Upload backup

Point Home Assistant to where the backup file is and double click on the file

Click the Restore button and then click Restore again to confirm

Wait for the restore to complete then reboot the computer for good measure

Now double check everything is working as expected

TIP: Moving the IP address can result in IP devices not connecting for a while. This is because the MAC address is different and it might take 5 minutes for instance for their cache to clear and then they will connect to the new computer