Overview of copying geodatabases

There are a number of reasons and multiple workflows available for making copies of a geodatabase. Here are a few common cases.

• Make a simple copy of a geodatabase, for example, to copy a file geodatabase.
• Make a copy of a geodatabase from one type to another, for example, to copy an ArcSDE geodatabase to a file geodatabase.
• Users need to make replica copies to use in version-based workflows and replication scenarios. For example, multiple offices in an organization may be geographically distributed, and each requires a synchronized (up-to-date) copy of the geodatabase. Perhaps each office maintains data for its geographic region and periodically shares its updates with other offices. In this case, you will use geodatabase replication. This set of capabilities provides tools for working with distributed ArcSDE geodatabases. See Understanding distributed data for more information.

The following task topics describe the process for making copies of geodatabases.