What's the fastest way to copy 151GB, 375000 files from win 2003 server to win 2008 server

Question

Non techie here.
I have a project where I need to get 151GB of data spread over 375000+ files moved from a win 2003 FAP to a 2008 server. Copy, xCopy, Robocopy all take in excess of 50hours to move it to an external HDD. Has to be external move for security reasons.
I have 40 hours max to get it off and onto the new server.
Cheers 
Ian

Answer 1

I copied over 12TB in 24 hours using the method below. A lot of this depends on your infrastructure. The scripts I used are unmodified for your case. I suggest you give them a look and understand the process and change it to fit your needs.
There are 2 parts. The first is a Main script that schedules PowerShell jobs that actually do the work. The main script will read a file called JobCount every loop to see how many jobs it can run at one time, the reason I did this was to change the number
of jobs depending on Day (production) times and Night times. Also, the Main loop reads a nomig file that tells the script, don't move these folders because they were our test cases, you can even do test cases during the migration since you can modify the file
while the script is running. The example was use to move thousands of home folders. Using Robocopy if you tell a single command to do everything, it will take hours to start, just looking around. If you do one root folder at a time, it will run much faster
which is the reason I created this. If you have a small number root folders, you may want to point it at folders where you do have a lot of subs, remember you can have more than one main process running in different runspaces.
Main Script 
VVVVVVVVVV
$homeOld = (Get-ChildItem -Path \\server\share | select name)
$JobRun = 10
$i = 0
$Count = $homeOld.Count
foreach ($homeDir in $homeOld) { 
    $i = $i + 1
    $Sdir = $homeDir.Name
    Write-Progress -Activity "Migrating Homes" -Status "Processing $i of $Count"  -PercentComplete ($i/$homeOld.Count*100) -CurrentOperation "Next to Process $Sdir"
    $not = gc \\serverl\share\script\nomig.txt -ErrorAction "Stop"
    $JobRun = gc \\server\share\script\jobcount.txt -ErrorAction "Stop"
    if ($not -notcontains ($homeDir.Name).ToLower()) {
            While ((Get-Job -State "Running").Count -gt ($JobRun-1)) {
                Start-Sleep -Seconds 3
            if ((Get-Job -State "Completed").Count -gt 0) {
            $Comp = Get-Job -State "Completed"
            foreach ($Job in $Comp) { 
                $outfile = $Job.name + ".txt"
                Receive-Job -Job $Job | Out-File -FilePath "\\server\share\verify\$outfile"
                Remove-Job -Job $Job}
            Start-Job -Name $Sdir -ArgumentList "\\server\share\$Sdir", "\\newserver\share\$Sdir", "/COPYALL", "/MIR", "/W:1", "/R:1", "/MT:5" -FilePath \\server\share\script\robothread.ps1 > $null
    else {
        Write-Host $HomeDir.Name " Excluded" -ForegroundColor Green
=====
Thread Script - where Robocopy does the work.
VVVVVVVVV
& robocopy $args[0] $args[1] $args[2] $args[3] $args[4] $args[5] $args[6]
============
This comes with no warranty, it is just an idea I used to do a very fast copy with permissions and all attributes, where no other method was useable.
Thanks,
Allan
Allan