File creation date - migrating to DP

charltond · September 2012

I have a WHS v1 which has been running stably for several years holding about 400 GB of data and backup for a small office. Included among the data are about 65 GB of photographs. I have a second server with WMS 2011 with DP. It has been running in test mode for a few months.

It is not possible for me to move the physical drives from the old server to the new server. So the files will have to be copied across the network. I am not concerned about the time it will take. I am concerned about keeping the integrity of the file creation date, particularly of the photographs. I have administrator privileges for both servers. The standard and customized folder structures of the pool are identical. The permissions and duplication settings for each folder are identical. I had been assuming that I would simply copy the files with Explorer from each shared folder on WHS v1 to WHS 2011 DP folders, one shared folder at at time. It may be that the duplication will not take place immediately. That is OK as I have a full copy in the old server as well as a cloud backup via Jungle Disk/AWS.

Could you confirm that this process will (or will not) result in a duplication of my entire data set with the file creation dates maintained? Also that this will preserve the permissions?

FYI, I will probably keep the old server running as the client backup server. So I am not too worried about bringing over the client backup files. What do you suggest?

David

p.s. Very pleased with the product.

Shane · September 2012

Hi David,

Permissions and times will be preserved (or not) according to Windows, not DrivePool. Since this is important to you, may I suggest the use of the robocopy command with the /mir and /copy:dat and /dcopy:t parameters? This will mirror content and preserve data, attribute and timestamp information of both files and directories, and the content will inherit the permissions of the destination folder. Do not use e.g. /copy:datso (s=security,o=owner) since you are copying between independent machines, unless you understand the possible consequences and find them desirable.

E.g. from an administrative command prompt on the new server, enter:

robocopy "\\oldserver\oldshare" "\\newserver\newshare" /mir /copy:dat /dcopy:t

Note: robocopy is a powerful command. Avoid typos. Remember to put the quoted source first, THEN the quoted target, THEN the options. You may wish to practice the command on a pair of test shares first to see how it works.

Shane · September 2012

Also, see http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Advanced_Settings

I suggest turning on CoveFs_SynchronizeDirectoryTimes if such is important to you (a few backup / monitoring programs can be fussy about it).

charltond · September 2012

Thanks for your suggestions. CoveFs_SynchronizeDirectoryTImes is set to "True", already.

One final question. I am not clear whether "Shadow Enabled" should be set for each phyical drive in the pool. It would seem to me that "Duplication Enabled" should take care of file redundancy. Or does DP rely on the Shadow functionality.

Thanks again,

Shane · September 2012

DP does not rely on the Shadow functionality. More on the difference between DP duplication and Windows shadowing is mentioned in the following thread http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/comment/2648#Comment_2648 if you're interested.

Shane · September 2012

Oh, and in case a directory tree comparison tool may prove of use, http://lploeger.home.xs4all.nl/TreeComp.htm is a quite nice piece of freeware (no affiliation).

charltond · September 2012

Thank you for your suggestions. To say again, I am pleased with SBDP. Good luck with v 1.2!

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