Copying large Windows directory structure to new server with permissions intact

Solution 1:

To copy all data and permissions, you can use robocopy per this technet blog post:

ROBOCOPY /Mir <Source> <Target>
ROBOCOPY /E /Copy:S /IS /IT <Source> <Target>

If you have domain-specific ACEs and you're moving to a different domain, you're not going to be able to do much other than document it and manually intervene.

Solution 2:

Robocopy or rsync is ok for making the copy (I use these) Make sure you use the latest version of robocopy. You can find rsync in the cygwin collection. If you have a huge amount of data and a slow network: consider using external disk, tape, ...

For the ACL's: you need to document this (maybe you want this documented anayway) Highly recommended: setacl This is a free tool you can obtain from helgeklein.com You can make a backup of your acl's and later restore them.

According to the documentation you can also replace ACE's of your old domain with these of the new domain (I did not test this)

I would suggest 1. make a backup of your ACL's (setacl) 2. make a compressed archive (7z is good for this) 3. get your data at the other server (robocopy, rsync) 4. make a restore of the ACL's 5. test, verify

Solution 3:

Use the I would probably start by looking at web deploy I would not reccomend simply copying the files as it seems to me from your descritption that you have a sizeable website. A tool like robocopy is fine for copying files but could have all sorts of permissions that you'd could spend ages trying to fix from a robocopy. Webdeploy can create a zip package of everything prior to copying manually or sync the servers.