Guidance and tools to enable IT Pros to upgrade custom Windows® SharePoint® Services 2.0 sites and templates to function in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environments.
Categories: Admin Tools & Tips · SBS · SharePoint
Ok here the latest top dog find on the search for a better file mover. The GUI driven utility is an improvement over RoboCopy. Read more below
Code download available at: HoffmanUtilitySpotlight2009_04.exe (5,896 KB)
Back in the November 2006 issue of TechNet Magazine, I wrote about a handy little utility called Robocopy GUI (see "Utility Spotlight Robocopy GUI"). This simple tool was written by a Microsoft engineer named Derk Benisch, and all it really did was create a graphical interface for the very popular Robocopy command-line utility, which provided file copying capabilities far beyond what was built into Windows. Believe it or not, more than two years later, the Robocopy GUI article remains the single most popular piece of content we’ve ever published, having been viewed well over 220,000 times.
Needless to say, this speaks far more to the value of the tool than to the quality of my writing. Nevertheless, it also makes perfectly clear just how crucial certain simple tasks are in our day-to-day lives, and how staggering an impact even a small improvement in performing those critical tasks can make.
In this case, we’re discussing the simplest of tasks: copying files. Except copying files is not always that simple. What if you’re copying thousands of files across a slow connection? What happens if your network hiccups and interrupts the copy? What if you want to make sure that you preserve particular file attributes, such as a Last Modified date, but not other attributes, like security descriptors? What if you want to filter the files you’re copying from source to destination based on filename or extension?
If any of these apply to you, the simple Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V combination probably won’t cut it. And though Robocopy GUI certainly improves on that basic functionality, it still has some limitations in terms of granular control and usability. What you need is RichCopy.
RichCopy is a free utility that comes to us from Ken Tamaru of Microsoft. The tool was first developed in 2001 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with evolving needs. Trust me when I tell you, this is the answer to all your file copying needs. What you’ll find most striking the first time you take RichCopy out for a spin is that it’s a multithreaded copying tool. That means that rather than copying one file at a time in serial order, RichCopy can open multiple threads simultaneously, allowing many files to be copied in parallel and cutting the total time required to complete the operation several times over. You can also pause and resume file copy operations, so if you lose network connectivity at any point, you can just pick up where you left off.
Of course, these are really just the simplest features of RichCopy. As Figure 1 shows, you also get a vast array of granular controls that allow you to customize all of those fancy aspects of your file copying that I talked about earlier—filtering files, saving attributes, adjusting cache size, and so on. If you regularly copy lots of files over the network or between various storage devices, these features will significantly ease your daily life.
Figure 1 RichCopy offers a number of granular controls that allow you to tailor file copying to your needs
Remember, as with all of our free utilities, RichCopy is provided as-is, and it’s not supported by Microsoft.
Categories: Admin Tools & Tips · Migration
Speaking of data migration (see last post) here’s a really clever way to exploit newer technologies to move massive file server data. This provided a couple years back by Jeremy Moskowitz of Group Policy MVP fame – the guy from GPanswers.com who’s developed the clever PolicyPak tools for Server 2008 era OS’s.
Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit 1.1
Brief Description
The wizards in the File Server Migration Toolkit use Distributed File System (DFS) to maintain Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths and to simplify the consolidation and migration process
Categories: Admin Tools & Tips · Migration · Windows Server 2003 · Windows Server 2008
Been doing quite a bit of data moving with a server migration and remembered that I don’t like commands with complex cryptic switches necessary to do whatever unique custom thing I want per this data folder but not for that one. Moving stuff involves the command line and Robocopy. So instead of all the typing there is this great GUI for RoboCopy that came to mind. Here a little about it and a download link is at the bottom.
If you’re like most IT professionals, you probably use the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tool called RoboCopy with Windows XP. RoboCopy is an extremely powerful copy tool that allows you to perform more advanced copy operations than with Windows XP’s standard copy tools. For example, with RoboCopy, you can create mirror images of large folder tree structures on the same computer or on a network drive.
The only drawback to using RoboCopy is that you have to run it from the command line. This means that in order to use RoboCopy you have to remember and type a lot of switches and parameters if you wish to really take advantage of all its features.
Fortunately, Derk Benisch, a systems engineer with Microsoft’s MSN Search group, created an add-in called RoboCopy GUI. This six-tabbed user interface makes configuring and using RoboCopy a real snap. Not only does the interface provide you with a large set of configuration options via check boxes, radio buttons, text boxes, and Browse dialog boxes, but it also can save your settings, which makes reusing the tool that much easier. Furthermore, RoboCopy GUI comes with a Help file and an extensive reference guide to help you get a handle on all that RoboCopy can do.
You can download RoboCopy GUI. Keep in mind that you must have Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 installed prior to installing RoboCopy GUI
Categories: Admin Tools & Tips · Migration
Deployment Trick when you are given error during install on XP SP3. The installer expects XP SP2 and it is fixated.
For the message "the version of Windows XP is incompatible with this patch", there is a fix I’ve successfully used.
tip found here:
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/fix-change-analysis-diagnostic-install-xp-
sp3/
where in the registry you simply flip the CSDVersion data value from 0×300
(SP3) to 0×200 (SP2)
key at: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows
Categories: Admin Tools & Tips · Registry · XP
Sean Daniel The Official SBS Blog SBS Documentation Team blog Susan Bradley Microsoft SBS Community Blog
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