Migrating large database What is a quick way of migrating 75G database to the cluster? I tried to test the backup and restore and it took more than 2 hrs. Business owners won't accept the long outage. Any idea how I can make this fast or how to accurately do it? This is on SQL server 2008 R2.
One of the easiest ways to use a full backup to prepare, a differential to migrate.

First off, you do a full backup and restore to prepare the files on the new server disks, but use the RESTORE .. WITH NORECOVERY option to allow more restores.

At the time of migration, you do a differential backup/restore. This is far quicker and you use RESTORE .. WITH RECOVERY this time.