Determining the Approach to Migration

You can use a variety of approaches when migrating the systems on your network. These approaches can be categorized as manual, scripted, automated, and user-driven.

Manual Migration. The manual migration approach uses USMT and includes the following steps:

  1. Acquire the user state information (by using Scanstate.exe).

  2. Deploy the new operating system.

  3. Load the new operating system with the user state information (by using Loadstate.exe).

Tip

Manual migration is Information Technology (IT) labor-intensive, doesn't scale, and has increased error potential.

Scripted Migration. Scripted migration requires that you write migration scripts to acquire and load user state information; yet, once written, the migration process involves the following steps:

  1. Use scripts to acquire user state information.

  2. Use the scripts for unattended installation of the new operating system.

  3. Use the scripts to load user state information into the new operating system (requires you to log on as Administrator).

Tip

Although it still requires significant IT labor, scripting the migration can reduce error potential and speed migration.

Automated Migration. By creating customized scripts (using variables such as %UserName%) to collect and restore user state information, and using Remote Installation Services (RIS) with tailored answer files to automate the new operating system (OS) installation, you can completely automate the migration process. This can minimize the amount of IT labor required, yet demands a bit more planning and design.

User-Driven Migration. Although not the method most likely to be used in most corporate networks, having users perform the migration process by using the File and Settings Transfer Wizard can minimize IT labor and can allow the users greater discretion in the movement of their information from one computer to another.

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