Is there a REAL method to create the initial data replica TO A USB DRIVE for DPM 2012?

Question

I've got several remote office locations with file servers containing a good amount of data, but they have very poor (3Mbps) WAN connections.
I've been tasked to set up DPM to back up these locations.  Due to the size of the data and the lack of bandwidth, I'm going to need to get the techs out there
to copy the data portions of the servers onto USB drives and send them to me so I can import them into the DPM storage here.
But I’m having some problems finding the document that instructs a tech
how to copy the initial data replica to a USB drive, then docs on how I can import this data.
I have found this: 
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj642916.aspxbut
it talks about server-to-server copying, which previously mentioned is not something we can
not do due to bandwidth issues.  We need to copy to USB drive, then ship the drive to me for import into DPM.
There’s some mention of doing this to tape (then importing to DPM) as well, but I can’t find more details either… it’s sort of weird, like the documentation or help
files on TechNet are incomplete.  Like take a look at this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh757818.aspx-- it’s
pretty useless!
Has anyone done this yet?  Can anyone please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

YES - we do this all the time.  In fact we never do the initial replica creation over the WAN.
Let's say you want to protect the entire D: drive of your server.  Attach the USB drive to the server and use robocopy to copy everything to the USB drive.  Something like (assuming the USB drive is E:) --
robocopy D:\ E:\ /b /e /r:0
You don't have to worry about copying permissions and all that stuff to the USB drive. DPM will take care of that during the initial consistency check and will make sure the DPM replica is an exact copy.  (If you DO want to make sure the USB copy has
the same permissions, add the /copyall switch to the robocopy command.)
On the DPM server, set up protection for that server's D: drive and make sure you choose the option to do the initial replica creation MANUALLY.  Once protection has been set up, you basically use robocopy again to transfer data from the USB drive to
the replica path on the DPM server.
You can find the replica path on the DPM server by going to the "Protection" area of the console and selecting the protected member of your file server (like the D: drive in the above example).  In the bottom pane there will be a "Replica Path" line
with a hyperlink that says "Click to view details".  Click that and a dialog will open. You can copy the path to the clipboard.  The path will be something like this:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\File System\vol_7a200c36-19b0-4f92-b05b-16458180f0fa\f1295bef-8329-46a4-9761-85e82017603d\Full
Just use a similar robocopy command to copy everything to the replica path.  Make sure you put quotes around the replica path destination since there are spaces in it.  Once robocopy is complete, you initiate a consistency check in the DPM console.
That's all there is to it...