During creation of a protection group using the New Protection Group Wizard, DPM asks you to select a replica creation method to copy the data to be protected to the DPM computer. You can select Automatically, for which DPM copies the data across the network, or Manually. When you select manual replica creation, you must manually copy the data you want protected to the DPM computer using removable media.

To create a replica manually, you must know the details of the source path on the protected computer and the replica path on the DPM server. It is critical that you retain the same directory structure and properties (time stamps and security permissions) as those for the data that you are protecting.

Note
For large amounts of data, manual replica creation might provide faster performance than replication over the network.

To display the details of the source and replica paths

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

  2. Select the data source you want to replicate on the DPM server.

  3. In the Details pane, click Click to View Details. The Details of Replica Path dialog box is displayed.

  4. Copy the list view content for reference. To copy the replica path, select a row in the Details of Replica Path dialog box, and then press CTRL+C.

To copy data files from a protected computer to the DPM server

  1. In the Protection task area, select the protected data and then locate the Replica path in the Details pane.

  2. In the Details pane, select the replica path and copy it into a text editor such as Notepad. The path will look like the following:

    <Drive:>\DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\Fileserver.mydomain.corp.myorg.com\File System\D-87a82ad4-f9d2-11d9-b758-000d561ae74f\e55173e1-0b7a-4fa4-b4d1-387ac2b016b8\3ed60b1c-dcf8-442e-b441-d771a3d7f014\Users

    Note
    You cannot change the directory to this path in Windows Explorer because it is too large.

  3. To access the Users folder, perform the following steps:

    1. At the command prompt, type mountvol and then press Enter.

    2. From the list of mounted volumes, pick the volume that corresponds to the appropriate path. The path will look like the following:

      \\?\Volume{a2072784-7573-4dce-a7e9-26713fd12697}\

          <Drive:>\DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\Fileserver.mydomain.corp.myorg.com\File System\D-87a82ad4-f9d2-11d9-b758-000d561ae74f\

    3. Type the following to mount the volume to a drive letter:

      mountvol k:\ \\?\Volume{a2072784-7573-4dce-a7e9-26713fd12697}\

    4. Click Start, double-click My Computer, and on the Tools menu, click Folder Options.

    5. In the Folder Options dialog box, on the View tab, in the Advanced settings box, under Hidden files and folders, clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) option, click Yes to confirm that you want to display the files, and then click OK.

      Now you can browse to view the entire path from step 3 in Windows Explorer.

  4. Manually copy the data to the Users folder under the drive letter you used to map the volume (K:\ in this example). Overwrite any data in the Users folder.

  5. After you copy the data to the replica location, perform a synchronization with consistency check. Protection will start after the synchronization with consistency check has successfully completed.

  6. At the command prompt, type the following to remove the drive letter that you used to mount the volume:

    mountvol k:\ /d

    Note
    In Windows Server 2008, run the command from an elevated command prompt.

See Also

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