Moving stuff around

[ProfHawking]

Im fast running out of space on my server, so im gonna be putting togethter another raid array.

The problem being i dont think that windows itself is very good at stable and fault tolerant file transfers.

Soes anyone know of any decent (tried and tested) bit of software that will safely move about large chunks of data without screwing up or dropping out if by some freak occurance the machine crashes or the UPS blows up or something while its transfering.
/edit
should mention, its windows server'03

[FatherJack]

xcopy /v

Er, there's not much can be done if something explodes, but it least it verifies. I rather like ncopy /s /m /o /u, but that's for Netware servers.

[Fear]

Windows will copy the file, test it exists at the destination and the file size is equal, then delete the source. I've never lost a thing. xcopy ftw tho (console based)

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Windows will copy the file, test it exists at the destination and the file size is equal, then delete the source. I've never lost a thing. xcopy ftw tho (console based)

That

I have never lost anything using windows transfery stuff.

However, if you're really worried:

I'd suggest using par files before moving stuff, copy rather than moving, verifying the new copy using the pars, then deleting the old.

But to be honest, that'd be stupid, there's next to no risk moving stuff around with windows, it's totally safe unless a user does something remarkably retarded.

[deject]

But to be honest, that'd be stupid, there's next to no risk moving stuff around with windows, it's totally safe unless a user does something remarkably retarded.

The only times I've ever had problems copying stuff were all hardware related.

[ProfHawking]

hmm. Im not massively convinced yet, but willing to give it a go i suppose.
I'll def copy rather than move. And see what happens

The raid card is here now, just got to order a load of drives now

[Woo Elephant Yeah]

We recently ran some kind of scripted synchronisation of data volumes, and then on the day of swapping over, it only took seconds to synchroise the stuff since the last time it ran.

Don't ask em hwo to do it though, there was a rather nice lady here who could script anything, and she did it.

Also, have you ever done a robocopy? Search the Windows website for info on how it works, that seems to eb the most popular way of transferring massive amounts of files on Windows 2003 Servers.

NOTE : It scares me that I am in a Desktop/Server Support role for a number of years, and people like Berk who do ti for shits and giggles know more than me

[Dog Pants]

NOTE : It scares me that I am in a Desktop/Server Support role for a number of years, and people like Berk who do ti for shits and giggles know more than me

This

Still, it has been said that a talented amateur will always out-perform a professional. Look at Hitler for example.

[eion]

In fairness, it's generally easier for enthusiastic amateurs to learn by playing around... a luxury that people in production environments don't often have.

[fabyak]

I've used robocopy and found it to be aces (although you will want to change the maximum retrys to 5 or 10 (down from the default 1'000'000 I think) and the retry delay to something less than the default (30s I think) or you'll wait forever if you hit a problem/open file)) and if you must use the mirror switch (which I wouldn't recommend) make sure you are definitely sending the correct source to the correct destination otherwise it will flatten your data and you won't be able to get it back

Otherwise it is great and I found it impossible to make it fall over dispite using it every day for server backups for about 6 months while Veritas pulled their heads from their arses and made a product that didn't abend Netware servers

[mrbobbins]

I've used robocopy and found it to be perfectly capable of DESTROYING THE WORLD