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Jesse
Asked: 2012-05-19 05:45:57 +0800 CST

Clone a windows server volume over a network -- NOT make an image

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I have a 5TB volume (non-bootable) on a Windows Server 2008 box. I need to copy it to another server over the network. Because the volume has 30 million files, filesystem copy tools like robocopy will take forever; I need a block-level copy. The source volume has to stay online during the copy -- so booting to Linux is not an option.

Acronis has to go from old volume -> image -> new volume.

What will let me go old volume -> new volume, without the image step in the middle?

windows-server-2008 robocopy acronis

4 Answers

  1. If you use rsync or something similar (should work on Windows), the initial transfer might take some time, but you can really quickly update changed files after the first complete transfer. This is my preferred method of moving large volumes of data from one system to another.

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  2. Best Answer

    You can use Richcopy or another multithreaded copy program and set your number of threads (in Richcopy: File Copy setting) to at least 8 or 16, and set the directory search to 4 or 8. We've used this method many times to copy millions of small files.

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  3. You could boot a Linux disc on both machines and use dd over secure shell, that'll give you a disk copy as long as the disk drives match. If they're not the same drives, you may have some issues with the new system. Sometimes they can be fixed with Testdisk and/or Windows repair afterwards.

    You do have to be really careful to pay attention to the parameters you pass (so you don't overwrite your "good" server volume). As long as you're careful the worst you will do is lose the time it takes to copy the volume over the network to see if this will work.

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  4. See Bart Silverstrim answer for general idea and risks. Here's the tools you need WHEN you can shutdown windows machines.

    1. Boot both systems with systemrescue cd
    2. Add root password to target machine with passwd and check that ssh is running /etc/init.d/ssh start or similar
    3. Make sure that the device/partition sizes match or target is larger.

    4. On source machine:

      dd_rescue /dev/SOURCE_PARTITION – | ssh root@targetIP ‘dd of=/dev/TARGET_PARTITION’

      # or using sparse option might work.

      dd_rescue -a /dev/SOURCE_PARTITION – | ssh root@targetIP ‘dd of=/dev/TARGET_PARTITION’

    5. Afterwards run some chkdisk on the new partition

    6. If you don't have any resizing tools ntfsresize is included in the systemrescuecd

    And here are some links to examples how to accomplish it. Requires some linux device

    download systemrescuecd http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

    ntfsclone example (local) http://edoceo.com/exemplar/ntfsclone-transfer-windows

    dd_rescue over ssh http://www.huanix.com/2009/04/11/data-recovery-using-dd_rescue-over-ssh/

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