Question

I have a large repository on a Windows machine. I would like to copy this entire repository on to another machine, ideally without going via ‘dump’ or using svnsync. If I can GUARANTEE that no file is changed during the copy process, can I simply make an exact file copy on the second machine using tradition file copying techniques?

Answer 1

If you have exactly the same version for subversion in both systems, it should be OK. I have done this before without facing any issues.

Even with different versions, it is still supposed to work, from svn book:

There are many reasons for dumping and loading Subversion repository
data. Early in Subversion’s life, the most common reason was due to
the evolution of Subversion itself(…). Now, these types of schema
changes haven’t occurred since Subversion’s 1.0 release, and the
Subversion developers promise not to force users to dump and load
their repositories when upgrading between minor versions (such as from
1.3 to 1.4) of Subversion.

For your specific situation (version 1.6 vs 1.7) there is a paragraph in the release notes for version 1.7 that clarifies the situation:

Subversion 1.7 servers use the same repository format as Subversion
1.6. Therefore, it is possible to seamlessly upgrade and downgrade between 1.6.x and 1.7.x servers without changing the format of the
on-disk repositories. (This is not correct in general for any pair of
1.x and 1.y servers, but happens to hold for 1.6 and 1.7.)