Copying data from one server to a new one! Problem!

Hello All,

Had a quick search but couldnt really find what im after, but here goes:

We have just purchased a brand spanking new file server

We are replacing the old one with the new one

The new one runs server 2003, old one runs server 2000

Problem:

Is there any easy way to copy all the data i.e staff and students saves areas from the old server to the new one?

With this we hope to retain the folder shares, for mapped drives, and also the security permissions applied to these folders.

Is there any way of doing this without having to reshare and set security permissions on the folders once copied to the new server?

Thanks in advance.

You could try backing up the data to a file using NT Backup, then restoring onto the new server. This should keep the folder structure and the permissions, but you'll still need to re-share folders.

For home drives, use AutoShare which will do this in a matter of minutes (once options are set).

I've not found anything for re-creating shares (although I guess you could just backup & restore that bit of the registry!), but I regularly use robocopy (from this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en resource kit) with the /copyall switch, this even copies the file ownership...

BTW, I've found xcopy unreliable, it will often crash, hence the use of robocopy (robust copy).

The files and permissions are easy once you've got the accounts transferred - you can just use xcopy with switches.

HOW TO: Copy a Folder to Another Folder and Retain its Permissions
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323007

Share 'copying' is a royal PITA! There's probably a prettier way to do it, but I ended up doing ours in Excel with a huge list of "net share" commands to batch it... I think you can do some voodoo with registry export/import, but once you're on a roll in Excel it doesn't take too long :confused:

Edit:Found this JSI Inc script which may be off use - copies files and shares and permissions... Wish I'd seen it when I was setting mine up!

http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=8587

Untested by me so YMMV!

You could just use the MS File Server Migration Toolkit this should migrate all of the file sharing settings for you. I don't know if it handles the files to but you easiest option there is to use ntbackup and simply restore them to the new location, the quickest option would be using xcopy with all of the necessary switches and extensions to make it keep the permitions.

I also found a third option from the MS site:

Quote:

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To migrate share permissions for migrated folders, first download and install Permcopy.exe, then use the following procedure.

To migrate share permissions by using Permcopy.exe
1. Create identical file shares on the new Windows Server 2003 file server that matches your current Windows NT 4.0 file server structure.
2. Backup the Windows NT 4.0 file server shares and restore the data to the newly created file shares.
3. At the command prompt run Permcopy.exe using the following syntax:
permcopy \\SourceServer SourceShare \\DestinationServer DestinationShare
SourceServer and SourceShare are the server and share names on the source Windows NT 4.0 file server, and DestinationServer and DestinationShare are the names of the destination Windows Server 2003 file server.
4. Repeat step three for all file shares on the server.

Note
PermCopy does not follow the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) standard, in which you specify the server name and share name together: \\ServerName\ShareName. Instead, PermCopy requires that you type a space character between the server name and the share name. If you do not type the space character, then PermCopy displays a syntax summary and does not copy share permissions.

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Backupexec will do this very quickly and easily.

If you're moving to 2003 R2 it'd be well worth setting up DFS to make this easier in the future.

I used the MS File Server Migration Toolkit when I had to excatly the same job, worked ok but not quite as expected (in that it put all the folders it copied into a folder... maybe I missed something, in theuser guide), not a big problem.

It did take a very very long time to copy the data, something to do over night.