A system administrator is tasked with migrating 2 TB of user-profile data from a retiring Windows Server 2012 file server to a new Windows Server 2022 file server. A critical requirement of the migration is to preserve all original NTFS permissions, file attributes, and timestamps. The process must also be capable of resuming an interrupted transfer. Which of the following command-line utilities is the BEST choice for this task?
The best utility for this scenario is Robocopy. Robocopy (Robust File Copy) is included with modern Windows versions and is designed for large, complex migrations. With the /COPYALL (or /COPY:DATSOU) switch it copies data, attributes, timestamps, NTFS ACLs, owner, and auditing information in a single pass, and the /Z switch enables restartable mode so an interrupted job can pick up where it left off. Multithreading and automatic retry logic further improve speed and reliability.
XCOPY can preserve NTFS security with the /O and /X switches and offers a /Z restartable option, but it is older, does not reliably maintain inherited permissions, and lacks Robocopy features such as multithreading, mirroring, and detailed retry controls, making it less suitable for a 2-TB server migration.
scp is intended for secure transfers over SSH and does not understand Windows-specific NTFS ACLs, so permissions would be lost.
rsync can be ported to Windows, but without additional extensions it does not copy NTFS ACLs; configuring it to do so is complex and not native to Windows Server environments.