Moving Staff Drives from D:\ to E:\

[kennysarmy]

I wish to start the migration process of moving our staff H:\ drives from the D:\ drive of the server to the E:\ drive.

 

Path is D:\users\Staff to E:\users\Staff

 

Sub folders are staff initials - same as their logon.

 

Process will be:

 

check user is not logged on

• un-share their folder
  
• copy folder from D:\ to E:\
  
• reshare the drive with the same name, set share permissions full control (same settings on the D:\)
  
• set NTFS permissions on the folder as before.
  

 

 

There should be no other implications to anything as far as I can see.....but just checking....

 

BackupExec is already set to backup the E:\ drive.

 

Shadow Copies set on E:\ drive as was on D:\ drive.

[Achandler]

Except when you copy retain the permissions using robocopy or xcopy instead of re-adding them.

[psydii]

depends what else you've got on D:

 

I'd be tempted to use robocopy to sync the new folder up (with the right options you can run it several times and it will remove deleted files and just copy over new/changed files, while carrying over permissions, file dates, folders dates etc)

 

Then when you are ready, change the drive letter on D to say F and change E to D and you job is done.

 

This allows you to run the copy 'live' over several days and offer a complete seamless transition for user.

[kennysarmy]

depends what else you've got on D:

 

I'd be tempted to use robocopy to sync the new folder up (with the right options you can run it several times and it will remove deleted files and just copy over new/changed files, while carrying over permissions, file dates, folders dates etc)

 

Then when you are ready, change the drive letter on D to say F and change E to D and you job is done.

 

This allows you to run the copy 'live' over several days and offer a complete seamless transition for user.

 

I've also got on the D:\ drive the shared resources folder for staff (U:\) and for pupils (R:\)

 

I see your thinking but I'd end up with two copies of all the staff drives and this would inflate the backup significantly as I would have to backup both their D:\ drive and E:\ drive copies....

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Except when you copy retain the permissions using robocopy or xcopy instead of re-adding them.

 

Will look at that....thought it's not a huge job to re-assign the permissions....

[psydii]

I've also got on the D:\ drive the shared resources folder for staff (U:\) and for pupils (R:\)

 

I see your thinking but I'd end up with two copies of all the staff drives and this would inflate the backup significantly as I would have to backup both their D:\ drive and E:\ drive copies....

The fact the drive is used for other shares makes the drive swap thing a non-starter (though still possible if you used Junction Points, he says, unnecessarily complicating things).

 

Backup also isn't an issue: many modern solutions have de-dupe capabilities, and you can also entirely exclude the e: drive as it contains no critical data.

[MatthewL]

Why don't you share the users path of \\server\homedrives\username rather than \\server\username?

[markwilfan]

@MatthewL presumably because of offline files

[JoeFulford]

@MatthewL presumably because of offline files

 

You would still be able to set up offline files using the share like this. I map our staff and student drives as \\server\RedirectedFolders\Staff\%Username%\Documents and \\Server\RedirectedFolders\Students\%Username%\Documents respectively.

 

I configured the offline files settings using a GPO and it works perfectly.

[penfold]

We have done something similar here and have done as suggested on this thread. Copied ALL staff data to new drive using Robocopy. Once all the files have been copied over. Re-run the script to copy over any incremental changes(also worth mentioning that you should use the mirror option so it deletes any folders users delete in the original location) Update the path on the users account on mass by using %username% in the path.

 

As for backing up the new drive - we just unselected the new folder on the new drive while it was copying over and then when it was complete selected the new drive and de-select the old one. So in your case backup D but not E before the move, after the move backup E but not D.