Moving a SOLIDWORKS Workgroup PDM vault to another system

This article goes over the process of moving a Workgroup PDM vault from one server to another.

One benefit of the Workgroup vault is that the entirety of the vault is contained in one folder. This makes moving it between systems far simpler than other data management systems. Below are the steps for moving the vault to a new system.

1. Install the Workgroup server software on the new system. For instructions on installing, see our Workgroup install guides here. Make note of the vault root folder location during the install.

**Note: be sure to install the same version as the version of Solidworks you will be using to access the vault.

2. Find the location of the vault root folder on the original system (by default it's C:\VaultData). This can be found in the VaultAdmin tool under the Vault Management tab,

Or in the registry in the following key.

On 32 bit servers
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS "version"\PDMWorks Workgroup\Server\rootPath

On 64 bit servers
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS "version"\PDMWorks Workgroup\Server\rootPath

3. Once the installation is complete on the new server, stop the 'SOLIDWORKS Workgroup PDM Server' service on both systems.

This can be done from the VaultAdmin tool, running on the server, under the Vault Management tab by clicking Stop in the Service section

4. Copy the vault folder from the original server (found in step 2), to the vault folder on new server (Noted in step 1)

5. Restart the 'SOLIDWORKS Workgroup PDM Server' service on the new server.

**Note: It's recommended to leave the Workgroup service off and disabled on the old server to avoid users connecting to the wrong vault.

6. The next time the clients try to log into the vault, they will have to enter the new server name or IP address.