# Use robocopy for switching file servers



## Thrasonic (Aug 23, 2013)

Hi all. I have a massive file copy I need to do as I'm moving data from fileserver1 to fileserver2. There's so much data, and it copies so slowly, that it will take possibly as long as 24 hours for the robocopy to complete. Also, there's no way to keep the users out of the files while the copy is going on.

Because of this I was wondering how I could use robocopy to get the job done. If I use the /MIR switch I know it will create an exact copy of what's in fileserver1 and place it on fileserver2. Once that's done I'd like to run another robocopy that only copies files that have changed since the last copy. I'd like to think that would result in a copy that would go very quickly. The only problem is I don't know how to do that.

Can robocopy do that? If so, how?


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

Yes. You can set the flags on robocopy to only copy the files with a newer time/date stamp. It's a crude way of doing it but it works. I had to do this very thing you're faced with at my last job. I had two data centers I was managing. One was one I was standing up new and the other was the existing one. The users were still working on the old servers at the old data center and eventually, as the users migrated to the new data center, I had to make sure the data was in sync at both locations. It was an extreme challenge to ensure Terrabytes (yes that's with the big T) was in sync every day. The initial copy was the biggest issue where the differentials didn't require much time to complete.

The various flags should be explained in the user's guide for robocopy.


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