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I am trying to create mirror image(copy) of C drive of my Window server 2008 using Robocopy.The Command is

C:>Robocopy V:\ M:\ /MIR /R:1 /W:1

My "C:\" drive consists the Operating System and contains some shared folder with network/other users.The Size of "C:\" drive is about 24 Gb but using above robocopy command it copies only 23 GB. When I tried to use that new drive as my booting drive for VM. Virtual Machine does not start and shows boot failure message.

The same above commands work with the other data drive "D:\" which does not contains OS. Note that in both the cases I have manually shutdown the Virtual machine which were using "C:\" and "D:\" drive prior to running above command and were not in use.

Now My questions are

  1. Does Robocopy has some issue with copying Operating System Drive "C:\" ?

  2. Does it left some boot files or partiton files or any other file which is required for booting the OS.

  3. are there any permission related issues with Robocopy

  4. What is the other alternative like can we use Xcopy.

Kanvas
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2 Answers2

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Robocopy isn't designed to clone system drives, hence you can't boot from such a backup. You have to use some other utility like Norton Ghost.

Pradeep Pati
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  1. Not by itself, but robocopy has some limitations on what it can do. Files locked for read by the system will not be copied, for example.

  2. Some system files may be left over (I never tested), but I think the system need to know where on the disk the file was copied, and this will not be the case with robocopy.

  3. robocopy will have same permissions as the user ezxecuting it. Some system-privileged files may not be accessible.

  4. xcopy will not be better than robocopy at this. As mentioned by Pradeep, use Norton Ghost or another disk cloning system

Mat M
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