Hi Joseph,
Either way will work if everything goes right.
Copying the imported item folder might be faster, depending on the size of the folder and how it's being copied (from a disk or over a network).
But a complete backup-and-restore is a simpler one-step procedure and less likely to have problems.
1) A complete backup is always nice to have if anything goes wrong during a migration, and it sounds as if this is your first time moving AC from a peer-to-peer to a server.
2) A complete backup makes it faster and easier for everyone If you have to call AC tech support for help.
3) A complete backup-and-restore helps to avoid the permissions problems that can plague manual copying.
4) A complete backup-and-restore shows that everything was readable and throwing no obvious errors on the original system and that your AC program thinks that everything has been restored correctly on the new system.
The ounce-of-prevention versus a-pound-of-cure proverb has no time variables.
Whatever you do, plan to have plenty of time for unexpected problems. If it all goes well Friday night, you can always find something else to do on the rest of the weekend.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
