First question:  99.9% sure it's yes.  No way they would get rid of settings.  It has always worked before.

Second question:  If you're just moving the database to a new server then no problem.  The settings for Explorer exist in the database, everything will still be there.  Are you creating a new one from scratch?  Then you would have to find a way to export the settings.  I don't know of an automatic way to do that.  You might be able to do it through SQL but that would be challenging.