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The following tips and tricks are provided to anyone free of charge. If you want to use the content it is free to exchange, just please link back to this site, www.soloenterprises.org. | Link text | SOLOEnterprises LLC makes no claims that this information will work for you. We also take no responsibility for any damage to your computer or information. Ok, enough fine print here's some info:

Copy All Contents from Harddrive to Harddrive

Before ever working on a clients computer I like to backup the entire harddrive to my server. No big deal right? Well have you ever tried using windows explorer to transfer 33 gigs of data over a network? Not very nice. Bogs the whole computer down and you get all kinds of error messages. So I searched around until I found robocopy. Its a command line utility that will copy files and attributes. It does a whole lot more than that, but for my purposes, I just need a fast method to backup a harddrive.

Sure You can use Windows Backup utility, but then you get a big .bkf file that you have to extract using the restore wizard. I just wanted to copy all files and have them in a folder for easy browsing. This is where robocopy / subinacls came in handy.

Requirements:

• Windows 2000,XP Pro, 2003 Server
• robocopy.exe- in the windows resource kits or download here (save as)
• subinalc.exe- in the windows resource kits or download here (save as)

Conventions:

• For this example we will assume that
• robocopy.exe and subinacl.exe are in your local PATH
• The C: drive is your main hard drive
• I generally pull the harddrive out of the client computer and transfer the data from a workstion to our backup server using a removable drive tray.
• the SOURCE is the F: Drive and is an NTFS file system. (if not NTFS, just remove the first line in the batch file below)
• The SOURCE is NOT the partition that is running Windows currently.
• the destination is a mapped network folder T:\test

Install both of these and then create a new text file called robocopy.cmd on your desktop.

Line 1 will use subinalc to take ownership of all the file on the SOURCE and give Everyone Full Control of the files and folders. I had to do this because some security settings will cause a failure copying files. Especially ones in application data and local settings.

start /wait subinacl.exe /errorlog="C:\errorlog.txt" /nostatistic /subdirectories F: /Owner=yan@solo.local /grant=Everyone=F /objectexclude=*.swp /objectexclude=*.dmp
/objectexclude=*.tmp /objectexclude=pagefile.sys /objectexclude=hiberfil.sys

• start /wait subinacl .exe //this starts the script and waits for it to complete before moving to the next line in the batch file
• /errorlog="C:\errorlog.txt" //this saves an error log to the path specified
• /nostatistic //this suppresses displaying the progress
• /subdirectories //Makes it do all files and subdirectories in the path specified
• F: //Path to hard drive
• /Owner=yan@solo.local //Who takes ownership of the files
• /grant=Everyone=F //Grant Everyone Full Permissions
• /objectexclude=*.tmp // no need wasting time on a file we aren't going to copy.

Line 2 Will robocopy the entire contents of the harddrive expect: *.swp *.dmp *.tmp pagefile.sys hiberfil.sys MCAF*.TMP "$VAULT$.AVG" "_RESTORE" "MSOCache" "Recycled" "RECYCLER" "Temporary Internet Files" "System Volume Information" "WUTemp"

I don't copy those files because I have never run into a time when I needed anything in any the folders and it just wastes time to copy them.

start /wait robocopy.exe F:\ T:\test /E /ZB /COPY:DAT /IA:RASHNTCEO /X /V /FP /XF *.swp *.dmp *.tmp pagefile.sys hiberfil.sys /XD MCAF*.TMP "$VAULT$.AVG" "_RESTORE" "MSOCache" "Recycled" "RECYCLER" "Temporary Internet Files" "System Volume Information" "WUTemp" /R:1 /W:0 /LOG:"C:\Documents and Settings\Yan\Desktop\robolog.txt" /TEE

• start /wait robocopy .exe //this starts the script and waits for it to complete before moving to the next line in the batch file
• F:\ //Source
• T:\test //Destination

So now just double click robocopy.cmd on your desktop and away it goes...