# Copying elastic indexes
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 16, 2018, 8:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106 "2018-07-16T08:43:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@safhw91](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/safhw91)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 8:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/1 "2018-07-16T08:43:37Z")
Hi,
\*edit
So we can copy the \elastic\data\nodes\ folder manually from one machine to another after shutting down, other sources confirm that this should work but is unsupproted. But this is a 1-off copy. Can we continuously do this? (put Elastic on SSD for speed and parse each indice till completion, then copy that indice over to HDD because my SSD drive does not have enough space for everything).
Specifically, I am worried there might be a clash in the UUID.
Thank you.
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/2 "2018-07-16T09:04:10Z")
> [@safhw91](#):
>
> other (official) sources confirm this
They do? Which ones?
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### Author:  [@safhw91](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/safhw91)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/3 "2018-07-16T09:05:45Z")
> [@How to move Elasticsearch indexes from one server to another one](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-move-elasticsearch-indexes-from-one-server-to-another-one/31909/15):
>
> Hi Mark, Can you please elaborate on the option of copying files. We are looking for a super fast copying of an index (1 Shard, Read-Only, ~5GB, ~1M documents) from an indexing cluster to a query cluster. The source cluster has 0 replicas target cluster has 47 replicas. When using backup-restore it is taking ~20Min. How can we take advantage of the fact that the index is merged and is read only for taking the minimal path. Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated! Baruch.
You, apparently 🙂
I understand it is nearly almost guaranteed to be unsupported. But I can live with that if in theory it should work.
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/4 "2018-07-16T09:06:34Z")
Ok, but it's not really right to say it's official.
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### Author:  [@safhw91](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/safhw91)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/5 "2018-07-16T09:08:45Z")
My apologies, I have edited that statement in the original post. But I'm sure you understand my predicament.
Would it work, in theory?
I understand there are other ways to export data, but it doesn't make sense to do the parsing on SSD, then export it to HDD (since then I may as well do the parsing on HDD due to the time it takes)
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 9:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/6 "2018-07-16T21:49:47Z")
Not unless you ran separate nodes and shut them both down each time you did the copy.
But if you were going to do that, then you'd be better off running 2 nodes and then using allocation filtering to do it all online.
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### Author:  [@safhw91](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/safhw91)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2018, 5:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/7 "2018-07-17T05:27:08Z")
Answer: create a snapshot like Elastic and co tells you to, it's really quick and doesn't take much more time than an unsupported lazy copy-paste of the indice.
Haven't tested the restore yet but no reason why it won't work.
Thank you.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2018, 5:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/copying-elastic-indexes/140106/8 "2018-08-14T05:32:46Z")
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