Duplicating, or copying task sequences within the same deployment share in MDT Lite Touch works is quite different compared with doing the same with ConfigMgr (SCCM). When you copy a task sequence in ConfigMgr, you get a true duplicate. When you copy a task sequence in MDT Lite Touch within the same deployment share, using the Deployment Workbench, you only get a link to the original task sequence.
This means of you if you change the copied task sequence, you will also change the source task sequence.
Modifying the copied task sequence in the test folder, like removing the Silverlight app, will also remove Silverlight from the source task sequence.
Duplicating a Task Sequence
So how can you create a duplicate of a task sequence? You have two options:
- Create a new task sequence in the Deployment Workbench, go the control folder, and copy the content of the task sequence folder you want to copy in to the new task sequence folder. Example: You have an old task sequence with an ID of REFW81X64-001, and you have created a new task sequence with an ID of REFW81X64-002. To have REFW81X64-002 being a duplicate of REFW81X64-001, simply copy the content of the REFW81X64-001 folder to REFW81X64-002.
- User PowerShell, the following PowerShell code will duplicate a task sequence.
Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn
New-PSDrive -Name "MDT" -PSProvider MDTProvider -Root "E:\MDTBuildLab"
# Duplicating the REFW81X64-002 task sequence into a new a task sequence with with ID REFW81X64-003
Import-MDTTaskSequence -Template client.xml -name 'Windows 8.1 Copy' -ID REFW81X64-003 -OperatingSystemPath 'MDT:\Operating Systems\Windows 8.1\Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64' -Path 'MDT:\Task Sequences\Windows 8.1' -Version 1.0
Copy-Item -Path E:\MDTBuildLab\Control\REFW81X64-002\ts.xml -Destination 'E:\MDTBuildLab\Control\REFW81X64-003' -Force

Copying Task Sequences between deployment shares
The behavior when copying items within a deployment share is different from when copy between deployment shares. When you copy between deployment shares, you get a true copy
Good friend and Microsoft MVP Mikael Nystrom recently posted a nice article on copying items between deployment shares.
Note: Copying between deployment share will fail if an object with the same name already exist, but if you copy a task sequence with a different name, but the same task sequence ID, deployment workbench will simply replace the existing task sequence without any questions.

Hi Johan, is it possible to copy the group/folder in a task sequence to a different deployment share via script? I have multiple task sequences that I manually copy to our monthly updated deployment share.
That's definitively doable, but I don't have any readymade examples.
/ Johan
On the Import and Copy steps make sure to include the backslashes.
Import-MDTTaskSequence -Template client.xml -name 'Windows 8.1 Copy' -ID REFW81X64-003 -OperatingSystemPath 'MDT:\Operating Systems\Windows 8.1\Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64' -Path 'MDT:\Task SequencesWindows 8.1' -Version 1.0
Copy-Item -Path E:\MDTBuildLab\Control\REFW81X64-002ts.xml -Destination 'E:\MDTBuildLab\Control\REFW81X64-003' -Force
Sorry about that. It was a WordPress migration that kindly removed "\" from the post. Fixed now. Thanks for the headsup.
Another way to do it is create a "root" folder that sits one level higher than all the steps in the TS, then copy/paste it into a new TS.
this is the way