Drive Copy - L4L - Old to New Server

[215HAN]

Hi,

 

Hope you're all well and hoping you can help.

 

We are in the process of upgrading to a new server and I am wanting to know what is the easiest/best way to copy files/data like for like?

 

I'm trying with Robocopy and it kept erroring on No Destination Directory Specified.

 

Any advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[chaplic]

Copying Files, I assume L4L = like for like, robocopy is a good choice, you just have the drive syntax wrong. I have sucessfully used it to transfer petabytes of files

 

For more nuanced and powerful option, take a look storage migration service

 

Also consider in-place upgrades of the existing server which now work pretty well, test first of course.

[215HAN]

Yes, Robocopy is what I'm using. Made a little progress and it now errors on network name cannot be found.

[chaplic]

share your syntax in use.

[215HAN]

Thanks for your response again.

 

I've made further progress. It is now running but I'm getting Access Denied alot which I'm guessing is down to permissions or is this something else?

 

If permissions related, is there a quick way for me to take ownership and then run robocopy?

[chaplic]

use the /ZB switch which uses backup mode and will likely solve the issue, though creates a headache if you want to do delta copies.

[215HAN]

This is what I am using and back to the error: network name not found

 

Robocopy "\\servername\X$" "\\servername\X$" /E /Z /R:3 /W:5 /COPYALL /LOG:C:\CopyLog.txt

[chaplic]

Minor tweaks to be able to copy as many files as possible as fast as possible and append to log. I would also run it from the source server, elevated

 

Robocopy "d:\sourcedata" "\\servername\X$" /E /ZB /R:3 /W:5 /MT:128 /COPYALL /LOG+:C:\CopyLog.txt

 

As for your error message, I'm not sure other than the blatantly obvious one of intermittent network issues or permissions. Assume you can actually browse to the shares in question and manually copy a big file via explorer?

[215HAN]

Thanks for the above.

It’s really odd with what’s going on.

The same command is now working and copying successfully 🤞🏽

 

So far so good

Will keep an eye on it

[215HAN]

Hi

 

Just a quick question on this matter, if I run the same Robocopy command again to copy/move over missed files/folders, will it copy over the whole drive again or skip what’s already copied over?

 

Hope I’m making sense above.

 

Thanks

[chaplic]

Does it intelligently so only copies what it needs to. Only gotcha is if it needed to use backup mode to access the source files (/ZB) it cannot read the destination folder thus canot figure out what to copy.

[215HAN]

Hi

 

Sorry, last question on this matter

 

Can I run to Robocopy commands for 2 separate drives at once or would this slow down the other or is it not recommended to?

 

Thanks

[chaplic]

No problem, monitor task manager for disk queue and network bandwidth to see how much you are using. Also use the /MT:128 switch which will copy up to 128 files at once (and will saturate links if you have big files).

[215HAN]

Thanks

 

Will do just that