Server Basics (11) | Home Drives & Folder Redirection

[@arhoneyc]

Hey man I've been a network admin for 8 years and I have to say I really appreciate your videos...even the server basics there's small things that you do differently that I didn't know you could do. Keep up the good work!!!

[@PC-Addicts]

Hey, you are welcome! :) Home drives should be auto created via Active Directory Users and Computers. As for the folder structure, I typically like to set them up like this: \\(server)\users\(individual student account names) - So, in Active Directory, when you setup the home shares, point the location to the above path up to the \users\ section. The permissions would be configured properly automatically.

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks a ton for your comment! I appreciate it greatly! I am the same way, I watch a ton of videos and find all sorts of little things that really help me out in some form or fashion. Thanks again!

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome Mohammad. When you say 'old data', are you talking about if the clients are currently not redirecting and/or having home drives but you want to set it up and make sure they get all their current documents pulled into the network'ed version of the home drives? It's been a while, but I think the Group Policy settings allow you to specify whether or not you want to do that. You might want to look at all the options in the policies related to redirection and home drives.

[@philboulding9108]

Nice to see someone putting back into the IT community, well done. Particularly like how you're not afraid of making a mistake and then remaining online as you correct it. Keep going fellah. Phil ex MCSE, ex Part time College lecturer (MS MCP's), Global Pgm Mgr, All round good egg.

[@PC-Addicts]

+Phil Boulding Thank you!!

[@PC-Addicts]

Thank you very much for your comments Jan! I am super excited that my videos are able to help others out. I love 'giving back' as much as I can.

[@PC-Addicts]

Glad you got the initial issues resolved. You could enable offline files, but I never really had good luck with them to be honest. At the hospital where I work now, the first thing we do after imaging a new computer is disable offline files. Also we use folder redirection as well, and haven't ran into problems where the desktop disappears. You are not using "Roaming Profiles" are you? For the backup: Make sure the destination folder for backups allows the user backing up write access.

[@daphmelj]

Chris one thing I noticed, and I might have written this already is that when you takeout the home share (for whatever reason) the C drive and all other Drives are kept hidden. What I did was apply a new policy under Administrative templates/ Windows Components / File explorer - Hide these specified drives in my computer. I chose not to restrict any drives. That fixed it! I find it weird that it doesn't for back to the way it was before....

[@PC-Addicts]

@MrJakewoodall No problem, thank you for coming back here to let us know!

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome. Thanks for the comments! Always love hearing how I am able to help someone out.

[@PC-Addicts]

One way comes to mind that might work (not totally automated, but might help) is to open an OU with a lot of users, select all of the users, right-click and select properties. You should be able to set the home drives all at once per OU (wouldn't be quick if you had a lot of different OUs).

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks for the comment! Group Policy is your friend. I would create a Security Group named 'Students' with folder redirection, then apply that policy to the 'Students' group

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome - thanks for the comments! One important thing to get the new 2008 Group Policy Preferences to work with XP machines is to make sure you have a certain Windows Update installed. Search Google for: Client Side Extensions. That might be what is wrong in your situation.

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks for the comment Kevin. Sort of, yes. In Active Directory Users and Computers, you can highlight multiple user accounts at the same time, right-click and select Properties. Go to the 'Profile' tab and you can set it there (make sure to use the variable for username).

[@scottweller8369]

man your videos are awesome since im trying to get certified this is the first video i have watched hope you keep posting them

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks for the comment Alexie, Ya, in Windows 7 and above (shoot, maybe even Vista) it's a little more of a pain. I actually need to do some hardcore testing with this and iron this one out soon.

[@PC-Addicts]

Anywhere! That's the cool part about having the experience leaned from a lot of what I am showing through my tutorials. You can apply for a lot of different positions in the IT industry with this experience.

[@PC-Addicts]

@lhamil64 To answer your question, no... They probably do it this way for that reason. The school I worked at as the Tech Director, we had this setup, along with roaming profile (video on this coming soon).

[@bpugh143]

This helped a lot!! I am setting up folder redirection at my job and was experiencing issues. Now its all working great. Thanks for sharing!

[@bpugh143]

...actually.. it's not. The file name folders have been created, but the items on the client computers are not "syncing" with the created folders. Is there something I need to do on the client computers?

[@jaelski1217]

This is a very helpful video specially for a CNA student like me. Thanks man!

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks for the comment. Ouch, yes Windows 7 folder redirection.... I will work on this as one of my next couple of projects because it's an important one.

[@miguelguerrero8732]

Firstly thanks for your video. After typing gpupdate /force in 11:00 the comments shown in the cmd, why does it :appears? I do not understand this comments or this comment is shown because of the folder rediction as executed when session is logging off or on? Explain me please

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome... glad I was able to help :)

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome Jan... I hope you have found the videos helpful!

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks John. Resize how though, are you talking about quotas or are you talking about wherever you have the H: drive stored, adding more HDD space?

[@PC-Addicts]

@Downie250 Oh thats right huh... LOL - So many requests, I tend to forget some... sure thing. Might not be for another few videos.

[@PC-Addicts]

Geez... I just watched this video and it was a great refresher LOL! I know, it's weird that I'm saying that, since I recorded and published this video, but man, it's been a while since I messed with this in detail.

[@lockedloaded1849]

+PC-Addicts Well done and still works today! Thanks my friend!!

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome! Thank you!

[@techniqx]

You have to select all users in the OU (Control+A) then right click and select properties. From the Properties menu, go to the profile tab and check the "Home folder" , select "Connect"; chose the drive letter path and specify the path of the home folder share. This step will configure every user's profile. You configure the size of the share drive by creating a Quota using the File Server Resource Manager tool. Create a quota to set the size limit, and apply it to the root if the home folder

[@PC-Addicts]

That's a good idea... sounds like what we do at the hospital I work at now.

[@rrkhh1]

Love the video,I set up a small network with a mixture of XP and win 7 machines and the folders action is working fine but the next morning most if not all workstations had no icons on there screens...came back after a restart...have any idea about that... THANKS Robert...

[@QuantumByteHub]

Chris thank you so much for your contribution, your les are Always top !

[@PC-Addicts]

Strange that the offline files policy applied, but the folder redirection did not. On the client, run gpresult and take a look at the results. See if you see if the policy was or was not applied. Also, check event viewer on the client to look for any errors regarding the folder redirection.

[@QuantumByteHub]

Chris i Always loved your video's ! thank you for your time on making the video's !

[@thejerseyshaun]

You Chris are a complete LEGEND! Thanks saved my beef today much appreciated.

[@PC-Addicts]

@SolidStateTech Again, like I said on the other video I replied to you - sort of off topic question, but yes I know how. Please feel free to join our live chat where we have techs willing to help - see the video description for the chat link.

[@irfangi1534]

Thanks for this video, I've noticed that you have a whole series which I haven't seen yet but plan on watching the whole series. One question about the redirection of the home directories, why do you not want to have offline availability, I really liked how you redirected it through GPO because I used to do it manually for each user.

[@PC-Addicts]

@MrJakewoodall Hmm... Are you sure that your CPU supports VT (virtualization)? That has to be enabled as well in the BIOS. Maybe that's what is wrong?

[@TheSmartodd]

Thank you. Great introduction to Home users.

[@MegaMike770]

thank you for the answer. i got it figured out it was a problem with the servername. i managed to correct it and everything is working sweet! thanks for much! however, 2 problems are accruing now with this configurations: on a few computers, they sometimes loose the connection and their desktop disappear until they restart - maybe the offline file should be enable? second and most important, backup is not backing up these folder because admin has no access. the backup is empty to these folders.

[@daphmelj]

Got it... you know I was doing it directly from folder redirection without giving the user a home folder path. BIG Mistake! Thank you for tutorial!!!

[@mohammadmustafa4681]

Dear Davis, thank you for the nice video and its useful,i have a question, i if i have old data inside any folder (documents, pics,.....) that we want to redirect it, does it replicated to the new user folders ?

[@MegaMike770]

Thanks so much for the continuous responds. the backup issue persist - i think you misunderstood my question. as shows in your video - when the redirected folder are created, you cannot access them from the server since the owner permissions are not set for the server user (access denied... until you take ownership). i tried replacing ownership and it created a problem. but yet because of that, the server backup isn't backing up these folders. please try it on your end and you'll see

[@kevinkaung9257]

wow..Thanks for the useful tips. btw, your videos always rock. cos these things are not taught in university of college. Bless you sir. :)

[@venomjackal]

Rather then moving the computer into the user's OU to explain it in a more practical way maybe you should of considered creating two separate policies one for computer configuration (offline files) and another for user configuration (folder redirection). Or even had one policy that linked to two OU's which included the computer and user configurations. Other then that a great video Thank You and keep up the good work.

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome - thanks for watching/commenting!

[@lhamil64]

@PCAddictsLive Cool. I'm going to college next fall for Computer Science (I'm thinking to work in IT) so it's neat to learn server stuff now so I'll be somewhat experienced with it if I have to deal with it later.

[@JayByrdSki]

Great Video. Thank you. Why do you disable offline files?

[@frostykilz123]

Hey this is really good was wondering...how can apply this to multiple users rather than going to each user individually and setting up a home drive, can i do this to a whole group?

[@redstripe555]

did you use unc path when setting up the target folder in Group Policy?

[@kevinkaung9257]

I have to ask you this cos Im confused.at 3:37. you have created the home drive H for SamEyeAm. Does it mean that all users from Super Cool OU will have H drive when they log in or do i have to manually create the home drive in each user in active directory? sorry if the question is too simple. and Thanks for all the tutorials..cheers:)

[@matthewnichols1808]

Thanks for the video. Now how would I limit each user to a specific portion of the remote drive. for example 1gb. I don't want someone that will come in and take up all the space with videos or movies

[@ManuelPerez-gp4se]

You need to setup the Drive to enable Quota. Once Quota is enabled then you can set the limits. It can't be done on a folder by folder or group by group basis. It is only on the Drive itself.

[@mariococca]

Excelent Video! Only one question. If I already have files on users it will copy everything to de server when I redirect The folder? Thank You.

[@buttsahib]

Nice one man, very useful also how could you set a quota of a specific users ? Also can you also show one of your video about configuring different types of RAID please ! appreciate it

[@SedoSan]

how do you assign home folders to multiple users instead of doing it by each user as you showed in the video? also, how do you configure the size of the share drive for all users? thanks.

[@stspringer2003]

Great video. How can i resize the H drive? Thanks

[@PC-Addicts]

Thank you Julius. Glad they help you out!

[@mrbitsense]

Hey Chris, I am getting a lot out of your videos, Thanks I am setting up home folders on the server 2012 machine. I created a folder called home on the c drive... Can you go over setting the sharing and the security for the folder? I cannort seem to get the permissions on home folder so that the user can have full control over their own home folder and not be able to see or access the other users folders. thanks

[@saibyke]

working great thanks on 2012 server with windows 7

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks for the comment. When you are setting up home folders, typically I let the AD Domain Controller handle setting up their folders. As soon as you create a user account (and/or setup a home folder within their AD account), the domain controller should automatically create that folder with specific (proper) permissions.

[@PC-Addicts]

@lhamil64 Thats awesome! I agree with ya... learn as much as you can as soon as you can, because it will help you greatly with your schooling!

[@PC-Addicts]

Are you using DFS at all?

[@lasertechcomputers]

well i got a server and followed all videos to this one and i have an issue making the network path i get all them right and i get to the last part to do that gpupdate /force and it dose nothing???? i dont know if i did somthing wrong or what, i have a dell PC and a dell server

[@PC-Addicts]

I need to test this out. I haven't tried it with Windows 8 yet.

[@lhamil64]

If you don't do this, will their documents still be synced to every computer they log in to or will it be stored on the local computer? I'm pretty sure my school uses this so that our documents are always there no matter what computer we use. It would be pretty annoying if each user could only use a particular computer (not so much if they each had their own laptop or something but if it was something like a school with computer labs then it would be pretty annoying).

[@alexiekola]

great video thankx very much but i did find that the folder location must be indexed or available offline for folder redirect to work

[@CesarPeron]

Excelente trabajo Chris!. Como reinicias el cliente de Windows 7 tan rapido?

[@bradleybrand0]

I tried doing this with a share name "home$" and when I clicked on the users Documents folder, it didn't direct them to the home folder but instead to a user folder. What should I do?

[@PC-Addicts]

@SolidStateTech You should be able to just type in the chat - there is usually over 20 people in there - might not be talking at that time.

[@SonicAngel2020]

This is awesome and thank you very much Chris. 2 questions 1. If I do this the way you demonstrated, won't users be able to see each other's folder? This is a porblem since I want users to not be able to even read each other's home folders 2. How do I automate it so that every users I create automatically has a home folder and his documents set in there?

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome - no, they should not be able to access the folders. If they browse for their root folders, they might be able to see them but would have no access.

[@hgva76]

You could create a "dummy" user with the variables already set in said profile. Then just copy it and enter the desired personal values.

[@samhuang1999]

Hi Chris- Great tutorials, but however when I try to deploy the new home directory redirection policy, it fails on all Win 7 machines. When I tried to map it manually, I got a error message that the drive needs to be indexed before I can redirect to it. How can I fix this? Thanks-

[@JakeFrancis]

Do you not need to change the permissions from inheriting from parent?

[@PC-Addicts]

@ClydeYURM Thanks! I have never been to college (except for a couple courses many many years ago), so I wouldn't know what a typical lecture would be like :)

[@PC-Addicts]

Nice! Thanks for letting me know how ya fixed it!

[@PC-Addicts]

Thanks! Hope the videos help ya out!

[@jcfester]

I currently live in south Florida - where can I find a job that I can apply all you've taught me in all these videos! Thanks. Jim

[@PC-Addicts]

@SolidStateTech You have the eye of a Tiger! Good find!

[@derrickmelvin6232]

maaaaaan!!! doope!! hanks so much Chris.GOD bless you.

[@PC-Addicts]

+Derrick Melvin You are welcome!

[@cartoonhead4082]

Can you disable the set save location via a gpo

[@MegaMike770]

did everything you did, the offline files policy applied good. but all the folders (docs, pics...) still pointing to the C drive. any idea?

[@daphmelj]

Hi Chris, I am trying to do the folder redirect but when I apply the policy nothing changes on the client machine... any suggestions?

[@PC-Addicts]

@MrKoolTutorials Thanks - hope it helps.

[@nakatatenken]

Hi , Question , if we configure this on a laptop , if the laptop leaving the office network , will the user able see the file when they at home ? since the folder redirect to the company share drive , as i "google" it , it required offline file GPO for it . does it true ?

[@PC-Addicts]

+Sean TJian This reply is a little late, but better late than never, right? No, if they take the laptop home, turn it on and log in, they will not have access to the folders and files on the network share.

[@nakatatenken]

hi , thanks for the answer =)

[@PC-Addicts]

You are welcome!

[@s0pp4]

thanx for the video but how to hmm but small icons to START MENU i only found guide to change Taskbar icons.. but not START MENU ?

[@MrSuperchamp]

Do you need to create a home drive in order to do folder redirection

[@illassdj]

I'm trying this on a windows 8 machine and nothing happens... I created the home share folder and it shows up on the client pc but the documents and pictures folders will not redirect back to the server. From what I can see, Windows 8 is the only thing I'm doing different than you are in this tutorial. Might you have any suggestions as to how this could be remedied?

[@jasonmorris4eva]

Why needed to disable the offline files? I don't understand that part. Can you please explain why. Thanks.

[@HelalKusho]

He probably disabled the offline files, because it has happened, that a user has logged in into many pcs and those pcs had a copy of the users files. This takes unecessary space from the client, thats why he disabled that completely. -At least thats what I think

[@guitarman5560]

Did you not listen to the video. He explains why he disables offline files.

[@guitarman5560]

I'm trying to get folder redirection working and having some issues to get it going. I noticed you add the users and computers to the OU and enabled the folder redirection policy in both user config and computer config. I can't imagine that being a mandatory solution for it to work. What if the user wants to roam around from pc to pc and wants their folders available from the network share and they are logged on to a computer not in the OU that has the computer config policy filtered to?

[@DytliefMoller]

He only added the Computer part to the policy as to disable Offline files, offline files setting is computer based and not user based...

[@AlexCheak94]

Hi I have a question how did u get internet and internal network setup in virtual box? Thanks for your help

[@PC-Addicts]

+Alex Cheak Check out my "Building the Ultimate Virtualbox Lab" video series here: kzbin.info/aero/PLWAHiM_D-qJ6EoN3vdaY_5jXpvvVmjMdE

[@luckowroy]

Hi, what is with the recycel bin? All Files deleted go into the redirected bin. how can i stop that?

[@blaize329]

Hey Chris, I tried the folder redirection but it didn't create the folders in my H:\ my gpupdate /force was unsuccessful can that be why? This is what i get from my WIN7 box. See second post

[@MrSuperchamp]

Thanks for the videos man their really helpful

[@vikaamrulumam9813]

Hi Sir, i got error message "the \\server\home_folders%\%username% home folder was not created because the path was not found. how do i check my server? thank you

[@CanecaProductions]

Just what I needed. Thanks!

[@zaheerjayah9035]

Hey ! If a Laptop user needs this way to be done in his LAP. and how can he work offline when the network is not accessible ?

[@Downstar]

Thanks again :)! Can you also make a video where you setup DNS with the zones etc.. you told in a previous vid you will made it later so :)

[@arukaen]

Do you need to set a home folder in order to do the folder redirection?

[@johnchan2723]

Someone told me that you can make a script for this.. Would you be kind enough to show us how? thanks for all the great vids, keep them coming.

[@PC-Addicts]

Give it a shot and let me know how it turns out.

[@daphmelj]

I am now trying the tutorial 9 I believe the one where you automatically map the drive. Well.... Since I had this setup using the batch file wouldn't work (said something about having a connection established to that path or something) So I removed the home folder from the account profile thinking that it would work. Well it did, however, my C drive I missing. I thought it would revert to the local drive but nothing happens..... Only the mapped drive appears.

[@PC-Addicts]

You know I haven't tried this one. I'm sure we can find something in Group Policy that could accomplish this.