Questions[file-transfer](server)

I am migrating my server from the USA to the UK from one data center to another. My host said I should be able to achieve 11 megabytes per second.

The operating system is Windows Server 2008 at both ends.

My average file size is around 100 MB and the data is split across five 2 TB drives.

What would be the recommended way to transfer these files?

• FTP
• SMB
• Rsync / Robocopy
• Other?

I'm not too bothered about security as these are public files anyway, but I just want a solution that can push the full 11 MB/s transfer rate to minimize the total transfer time.

I currently have two CentOS servers. I need to know how and what the quickest way would be to "tar" up the images directory and SCP it over?

Is that the quickest way that I just suggested, because tarring is taking forever... I ran the command:

tar cvf imagesbackup.tar images

And I was going to just scp it over.

Let me know if there is a quicker way. I have remote/SSH access to both machines.

I'm trying to use robocopy to transfer a single file from one location to another but robocopy seems to think I'm always specifying a folder. Here is an example:

robocopy "c:\transfer_this.txt" "z:\transferred.txt"

But I get this error instead:

2009/08/11 15:21:57 ERROR 123 (0x0000007B) Accessing Source Directory c:\transfer_this.txt\

(note the \ at the end of transfer_this.txt)

But if I treat it like an entire folder:

robocopy "c:\folder" "z:\folder"

It works but then I have to transfer everything in the folder.

How can I only transfer a single file with robocopy?

The more I use rsync the more I realise that it's a swiss army knife of file transfer. There are so many options. I recently found out that you can go --remove-source-files and it'll delete a file from the source when it's been copied, which makes it a bit more of a move, rather than copy programme. :)

What are you favorite little rsync tips and tricks?

I have to copy a large directory tree, about 1.8 TB. It's all local. Out of habit I'd use rsync, however I wonder if there's much point, and if I should rather use cp.

I'm worried about permissions and uid/gid, since they have to be preserved in the copy (I know rsync does this). As well as things like symlinks.

The destination is empty, so I don't have to worry about conditionally updating some files. It's all local disk, so I don't have to worry about ssh or network.

The reason I'd be tempted away from rsync, is because rsync might do more than I need. rsync checksums files. I don't need that, and am concerned that it might take longer than cp.

So what do you reckon, rsync or cp?