copy data

[khaliqamar]

Hi,

Any suggestions.

I have to copy 3 tb data on one VM.

it is having more than million files.

I tried to pass through the usb to vm via esx host but vm is not getting it. may  be limitation on filesystem. it is ntfs.

any other suggestion.

[JPM300]

Is this a RAW disk?  Or is this 3TB spread across multiple VMDK's?

[khaliqamar]

Hi,

It is a RAW disk, USB hard drive (external hard drive).

no vmdk, it is a simple data which i want to copy in a virtual machine..

[JPM300]

Well, if you want to copy the files on the RDM to a new VMDK there is a few options.

1.)  You could P2V the system and take the drive that way.  Just make sure you don't resize the drive on the P2V so you can do a sync job after the initial copy.  So even if the copy takes 2-3 days to finish, you can run a sync after and it will juts sync the changes

2.)  If that is to disruptive or doesn't work for you, you can use Robocopy which is built into Windows and copy chunks of data at a time then sync it.  Robocopy is a differential copy so after the initial copy it will only take the changes.  We use it a lot for large file server moves.  We take one share at a time and have the Robocopy scirpt running every hour or so to sync the changes then when we are ready to cut over we take one last sync then break the share and switch over.  If you need a hand with a Robocopy script let me know and I can write one for you really quick.

3.)  Backup the data with your backup software then restore it to the new location.

These are probably your best options.  The reason why I asked if it was an RDM as if it was a RDM from the SAN and not USB you could just move it, however it doesn't seem like that's the case.  In all reality 3TB is a fair amount of data to move and since your doing it through USB that will be your bottle neck that you will just have to work around.

Anyhow hope this has helped.

[krish290785]

I understood that, You have an external HDD with 3 TB data on it with lot of files and you want to copy the data to the VM on the ESXi.

You might have to connect the Desktop/Laptop back to back to the ESXi and then connect the USB to Laptop/Desktop. Make sure that the Laptop/Desktop is atleast 1Gbps.

You may either use the Robocopy/Filezilla FTP server to copy the files from the desktop/Laptop. Make sure that the max simultaneous transfers are selected.

The copy time is completely dependent on the size of the files and the number of files since the indexing of each and every file would delay the copy process. In your case it would take a bit longer than expected.