thanks for all your responses but im still not following the process.

davey23uk, i want to keep the oracle server on box 'A' i just want to move all the files to a directory on box 'B'. And then tell oracle on box 'A' that all the files have moved.

what exactly is going on with these steps?

Alter database backup controlfile to '/...../..../../';
Alter database backup controlfile to trace;