Basic RoboCopy Drive Migration

[scottalanmiller]

Robocopy is one of those ultra-powerful, quintessential Windows tools. It is akin to RSYNC in the UNIX world.

One of the more common tasks in RoboCopy is to take one directory or drive and make a complete copy to another location. This would be most common when a system is being migrated and you need to be sure to capture all available data. Here is a simple example:

robocopy f:\ \\snoopy\e$\ /zb /copyall /e

In this example we are “pushing” data from the local f:\ drive to the remote server “snoopy” where it is being placed at the root of the e:\ drive here using the invisible admin share for that purpose. You could just as easily “pull” from a remote server to a local drive, copy between remote systems or copy between local locations.

The /copyall flag is actually a collection of many flags that mimic “preserve” settings in UNIX bringing all ownership, security and attributes along with the files. The /e flag tells the command to copy everything including subfolders and empty folders. The /z flag tells the system to operate in a restartable mode so that, if interrupted, you can pick up where you have left off. Very important for normal usage. And finally, the /b or backup flag puts Robocopy into backup mode allowing a system administrator to grab all data, even data which he may not have permission to read under normal circumstances.

Originally posted on my Windows Administration blog here in 2013: http://web.archive.org/web/20131127233553/http://www.scottalanmiller.com/windows/2013/04/09/basic-robocopy-drive-migration/

[BRRABill]

This will be helpful when 2016 comes out and I need to migrate all the data off my data server.

Last time I used the Server Migration Wizard.