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happytangFlag for United States of America

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How to move terminal server profiles between servers.

Hi,

I have recently built a new terminal server in order to replace my old one. I have not deployed roaming profiles.

How do I move these profiles to another computer? I found some stuff about registry keys and such, but am not sure if that would work with Server 2008.

Setup:
Terminal Server #1: Windows Server 2008
(New) Terminal Server #2: Windows Server 2008

I need the profile moves to be seamless, and I have about 15 profiles (about 1GB or more each).

Thanks for your help.
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tigermatt
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The easiest way which I have found is to utilise Robocopy to copy the folders to the new location. By using robocopy you can specify one of the command line switches to copy over the NTFS permissions too, which is required.

There should be no need to recreate registry entries, but as always, login as a test user on TS1 and test the copy procedure (and login) on TS2 before you do the production profiles.

-tigermatt
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ASKER

Hi, just looked around the internet, found some stuff, but no direct explanation about the syntax required to just plainly move over the profiles.

Can you by chance provide me directions as to how to actually use robocopy?
Oh and I am using Server Enterprise 2008 x64.
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tigermatt
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Hmmm don't know if you're up Matt, but hopefully ou can reassure me on this.

I'm currently using the command you just put down. Robocopy apparently seems to be working, however I have something weird going on in which I am unaware of how to proceed.

As Robocopy is running right now, it began on the first profile. Reading it, it is creating new directories and everything right now.

The problem is at the moment it just keeps creating an "application data" subfolder.

Right now it's trying to copy C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\" and it just keeps going. What should I do about this?

I know about a /XD switch, but am unaware of how I would ask it to exclude a whole string for "Application Data" just in case this pops up in other profiles.
Ok that just failed miserably.

Right now I have just restarted the command with

ROBOCOPY \\oldserver\C$\Users \\newserver\C$\Users *.* /E /XD Application* AppData* /COPYALL

Seems like it's going through successfully. Is there anything wrong with the way I wrote it?
Can you try copying to an intermediatery folder on the newserver first? C:\Temp, for example. It could be some problem that the Users folder doesn't like robocopy copying to it.
Actually the original command that I had was putting it into another different folder on the D drive of the new server. It ended up giving me the same error.

I just redid the script again as it ran into another error copying "All Users" which is hidden from plain view. I just added that to the exclude list, so I'll see how it fares from there.

Any ideas as to how I should copy over the app data and stuff?
Are you using Folder Redirection? If not, then the Application Data will be within the profile folders you are copying over, so it should all be carried over.
If you use Folder Redirection on any folders, then those redirected folders would need to be rehomed to the other server and then obviously the path updating in Group Policy.

-tigermatt