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ondra
Asked: 2010-11-15 09:56:46 +0800 CST

Migrate data from one disk to another while retaining all settings (shares/drive letter)

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I am going to migrate data from one disk array to another. The hosts connected to the storage are Windows 2003/2008 servers. Is there a way to migrate the data in such a way that the OS would retain e.g. all share configuration?

How can I do that? I tried to copy one disk to the other on Linux but that still seems to change the drive letter and remove the share configuration.

Alternatively, is there a way to dump the share configuration and restore it back?

windows-server-2008 windows-server-2003

1 Answers

  1. For Server 2008, the built in Windows Backup app will backup an entire volume and restore it to another location.

    Server 2003 doesn't have this capability built in. There are many 3rd party apps that can do this also, Acronis and StorageCraft have worked well for me. Search for "image backup" for other options.

    I believe that dd is the utility for this in the Linux world. You will need exclusive access to the source and target drives from Linux to accomplish this.

    For just migrating the share configurations there is the MS File Server Migration Tool:.

    DFS can be used if the shares will move from 1 server to a new server: set up DFS on source, configuring DFS on the target, let it replicate and then remove DFS on the source. DFS can be removed or left on the target when replication has completed.

    NTFS permissions (separate from Share permissions) and printers can be migrating using other tools, Xcacls.exe / Xcalcs.vbs, robocopy, MS Print Migrator.

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