# Anyone have a good/fast way to copy a lot files from one server to another via SMB



## avisitor (Jul 13, 2008)

I need to move a few million files (~600GB) from one server to another. 

The originating server is running 2k3 Storage Server Edition and the destination server is running 2k8 Enterprise. Both servers are using 4 disks in RAID 5. 

Here's what I've tried:

* Robocopy: Seemed really slow. Like took 30 minutes to move a gigabyte.

* RichCopy: Nice and fast, except it didn't preserve ACLs. That's the most important thing. I need permissions preserved.

* Fast Copy: It seems to work. It's about the same as Robocopy. Maybe faster. I can't tell.

The main problem with everything is the number of files. They're not large, there are just a ton of them. (Think millions of Word docs and other similar files.)

The other problem is that there's a backup job running right now. (It's been running for over 30 hrs.) I'd need to get permission to kill it.

What do you guys think.


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## avisitor (Jul 13, 2008)

Fast Copy seems to be about twice as fast as robocopy. However, it's all still too slow.

Does anyone know of a multithreaded file copier. I think that's the main problem. I really don't want to write one.


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## leroys1000 (Aug 16, 2007)

You will want to kill that backup process as it uses a lot of cpu cycles
and hard drive throughput.
That is going to slow it down a lot.
Still,600Gb is a lot to move and will take a while.
You might dump the files to an external drive,then
transfer them.


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