Copying files from one machine to another

Hi. I hope someone can settle an argument I have with a friend lol. Let's say you have a large amount of data on "server1" and you want to copy it to "server2" from your workstation. I'm using Win 7 64 as my workstation if that matters. What I do is RDP to server1 then just "robocopy drive:\folder \\server2\drive$\folder /s". My friend tells me the RDP step is pointless and that I should just (on my own workstation) do "robocopy \\server1\drive$\folder \\server2\drive$\folder /s".

The reason I RDP is because I'm afraid if I copy using my Workstation the data path has to go server1 -> workstation -> server2 because I assume my local instance of robocopy needs to read the file data whereas RDP'ing makes it just server1 -> server2 and saves an extra hop.

Is my supposition accurate or not? Thanks!

I believe you are correct. If you fire the command from the workstation the workstation's throughput becomes an issue. How much of an issue depends on the throughput rate vs. network speed.

You are right. The computer issuing the command needs to access the data in order to copy it. That means that the whole lot will bounce over your computer while doing so (you can confirm that by looking at the network statistics, seeing that there will be significant download and upload traffic). For small files, it don't makes a noticeable difference, but for large transfers there may be an important delay.