Robocopy vs RichCopy

[The_Unbeliever]

Just a quick heads up.

I've got to migrate a lot of data and users home directories from an old server to a new server.

I've tried out robocopy, but it does not work, as the version that's available on Microsoft's website is XP010 - and it cannot copy security descriptors over.

I've spent a fruitless hour googling (and binging) in order to get robocopy xp026 (or xp027), but to no avail.

Enter RichCopy.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog

This is a newer tool, and is under active development. It is able to copy files together with their security descriptors, so it should be easy and painless for me to copy the files over, decommission the old server, slot in the new one, and be up and away in as little time as possible.

The advantage is that richcopy is a multithreaded tool, and thus can copy more than one file over at the same time, whereas robocopy can only copy one file at a time. This should reduce copying time somewhat.

Hope this will help somebody who'll need to mirror an old server to a new one with the security descriptors intact.

Regards

Libs

 

[HavocXphere]

Thats cool. Looks feature rich.

The advantage is that richcopy is a multithreaded tool, and thus can copy more than one file over at the same time, whereas robocopy can only copy one file at a time. This should reduce copying time somewhat.

Multithreading is good, but not the way you think. The last thing you want is it copying multiple files at the same time. Causes the HDD head to move jump around & increases overall time. Multithreading is only good for 2 things when it comes to copying: 1) Making the interface responsive 2) If source & dest are separate physical devices then one thread reads the other writes, but still only 1 file at a time.

Spent ages writing this type of code a few years back. Very interesting playing around with this & timing various settings & buffer sizes.

Slightly OT: I recently discovered this: Install Teracopy & Totalcommander. Set Teracopy to replace normal windows copying. Set TotalCommander to use the windows copying instead of built-in copying. Now F5 & F6 in total commander use Teracopy.

 

[thisgeek]

fwiw, in robocopy:

/COPY:copyflag[s] :: what to COPY (default is /COPY:DAT).
                     (copyflags : D=Data, A=Attributes, T=Timestamps).
                     (S=Security=NTFS ACLs, O=Owner info, U=aUditing info).

From robocopy /?

 

[iblade]

This is slightly OT but still relevant. You could use SMIGMigrate (PowerShell) that comes with Server 2008 R2 and it can do this exact scenario to 2 Win2K3 boxes.

You can even use this to move roles, like DHCP etc.

 

[ubercal]

Ive used robocopy to copy data and it works fine.If you know how all the switches work then it will do whatever you want it to do ie retain ntfs permissions etc

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Ive used robocopy to copy data and it works fine.If you know how all the switches work then it will do whatever you want it to do ie retain ntfs permissions etc

As long as it's version XP026 or higher.

Version XP010 (available from M$) still have a bug which prevents file security from being copied.

 

[ColinR]

I ended up writing a windows service to manage the copying of files over a slow network connection. (unstable wireless)
I only copy the data though - no attributes. It's used solely for media distribution.