Folder moving

A[L]C · 26 Mar 2009 at 09:40

Ive got to move 2.2tb of users data to another storage area. Can anyone recommend a tool to do this whilst keeping the permissions intact?

GUI preferred

Thanks

--Mike-- · 26 Mar 2009 at 09:51

I know you said a GUI is preferred but I've used xcopy successfully.

xcopy c:\origfolder d:\newfolder /O /X /E /H /K

type xcopy /? to get the definitions of the parameters.

A[L]C · 26 Mar 2009 at 09:52

Would prefer to have a gui or batch just because there are so many folders (over 2000) and need to be moved in sections

--Mike-- · 26 Mar 2009 at 10:02

Had a quick look and RoboCopy will do it, and there is a GUI available for it.

A[L]C · 26 Mar 2009 at 10:15

Does anyone know of any software where you can select multiple folders?

OCdude · 26 Mar 2009 at 10:44

The Robocopy GUI is pretty lame.

The /MIR switch should do what you require - or, you could always use NTbackup? That keeps permissions intact.

chaosophy · 26 Mar 2009 at 10:49

Securecopy is worth a look.

But you don't give a lot of info about your setup and what you are planning.

A[L]C · 26 Mar 2009 at 10:53

chaosophy said:
Securecopy is worth a look.

But you don't give a lot of info about your setup and what you are planning.

What would you like to know? We've installed a new NetApp shelf and need to transfer the folders over to this new shelf.

A[L]C · 26 Mar 2009 at 12:11

chaosophy said:
Securecopy is worth a look.

But you don't give a lot of info about your setup and what you are planning.

Secure copy looks really good, but a bit expensive

MarcLister · 26 Mar 2009 at 19:28

A[L]C;13757135 said:
Would prefer to have a gui or batch just because there are so many folders (over 2000) and need to be moved in sections

You could do either one Robocopy script with the necessary flags to keep file permissions intact and have it run sequential tasks so that a certain move can be made and then is followed by another. Or have several Robocopy scripts that each control one of these section moves you need and have a master batch script (not Robocopy) that runs each Robocopy batch script in sequence; so the first batch script is run and then when that's finished, the master batch script runs the second one and so on.

--Mike-- said:
Had a quick look and RoboCopy will do it, and there is a GUI available for it.

I've not really looked at the Robocopy GUI in much detail but I don't think its up to much. Considering Robocopy is quite a complicated prog to use it makes sense to use the batch script version and understand that rather than fiddle with a GUI.

chaosophy · 26 Mar 2009 at 20:02

A[L]C;13758082 said:
Secure copy looks really good, but a bit expensive

I guess it could be expensive if you only use it the once but if you can think of other times when it might be useful and then cost up things like the time you'd spend writing robocopy scripts, it is a great tool to have that'd probably pay for itself.

A[L]C;13757539 said:
What would you like to know? We've installed a new NetApp shelf and need to transfer the folders over to this new shelf.

Hmm, lots

or maybe not

Just that I'm working on a data migration project at the moment moving from EMC Celerras over to NetApp but at the same time going from an old NT4 domain, the Celerras with local groups etc, to AD, the NetApp and AD domain groups. Also some of it is general data, some users, some application, some unix exports/mounts, each bit of which gets treated differently and has it's own needs and concerns.

I guess really I'm just after a feel as to how complex your setup/migration is and then what tool would be best?

But if you are using NetApp talk to them about their VFM software. Personally I'm not a huge fan of it but talk to your NetApp account manager/tech people and see if they can help out with it.

chaosophy · 26 Mar 2009 at 20:05

MarcLister said:
I've not really looked at the Robocopy GUI in much detail but I don't think its up to much. Considering Robocopy is quite a complicated prog to use it makes sense to use the batch script version and understand that rather than fiddle with a GUI.

Yeah, i've only looked at the gui once, ages ago, and didn't think it was much copy either. Just seemed to be tick boxes for the switches with not much explanation. Just seemed to be for people to lazy to type as you still needed to know how rc worked at the command line to get any use out of it.

MarcLister · 26 Mar 2009 at 20:08

chaosophy said:
Yeah, i've only looked at the gui once, ages ago, and didn't think it was much copy either. Just seemed to be tick boxes for the switches with not much explanation. Just seemed to be for people to lazy to type as you still needed to know how rc worked at the command line to get any use out of it.

Exactly. One of my Uni lecturers wanted us to use a command line version of Linux, not to make it harder for us, but to give us the experience of writing out commands instead of just ticking boxes, which frankly anyone can do. He also said that if we got jobs where we could indeed tick boxes there may come a time when the GUI wouldn't work and we'd need to be able to resort to the command lines instead.

If anyone is going to use Robocopy, use it properly. It is very powerful and you should really use the command line version if you want to do more than scratch at the surface of its potential.

chaosophy · 27 Mar 2009 at 08:41

Linux is cmd line surely, any gui will be a bolt on.

But your lecturer is correct, all our unix/linux servers at work are purely cmd line based, none have gui's on them.

MarcLister · 27 Mar 2009 at 13:50

chaosophy said:
Linux is cmd line surely, any gui will be a bolt on.

But your lecturer is correct, all our unix/linux servers at work are purely cmd line based, none have gui's on them.

Linux will basically be cmd line yes. But this was a Linux build with pretty much no GUI at all to stop us from cheating.