Folder Redirection for Vista

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I am sorry if this is not the right place to ask the question. I have asked
this question on windows.server still waiting for reply form anyboy. If
anyboy can tell me where will be the right place for this question. I am
asking the question any way and if somebody can answer that will be really
helpful.


Question

Hey can any body tell me how to redirect Documents folder to a local computer
supposedly on d: Drive. Currently i am testing Folder Redirection, if i
redirect to home directory it works fine but if i redirect to d: Drive than
it creates Document folder on d: Drive but other than that it doesn't do
anything.

Also, if anyone know when microsoft is going to realease best prectices for
Roaming Profiles, Folder Redirections and Offline Files.

It will be great if anybody can help.

Thanks
 
I may be getting the wrong idea here, but...

If your getting a "Documents" folder, then it would appear you are
performing a "Basic Redirection" which will redirect that particular shell
folder to a common location, for each user. For example, I imagine you set
"D:" as your redirect root path. If you did this through the the Windows
interface (as opposed to Group Policy), and to the "My Docuemtns" shell
folder, then you would see a preview like "D:\Jane\Documents" at the bottom
of the dialog. This will create a new user folder for each user, on the root
of the "D:" and will give it the name "Documents".

If you want all users to have a common documents path (security may be an
issue here), then you can use "Advanced Redirection" to a folder on the "D:\".

Hope this helps.
 
Sorry, I think, I confused you. Well, I have solved the problem but now
another issue comes up. So, here it is.
When I asked the question the scenario was I wanted to redirect the
“Documents†folder to the home drive and at the same time redirect the
“Picturesâ€, “Music†and “Videos†folder to “D:†drive.
I solved it by manually share the “D:†drive which is something like this
“\\HD123456\d:†where HD123456 is the computer name, and then redirect those
three folders. However now the issue is as we have to do this for more than
2500 users and as every boy’s “Computer Name†is different what is best way
to this. I guess we could do this with Advance option but currently I am
testing the Basic redirection. Hope, now I made myself clear and if you could
give me some idea that will be really appreciable.

Thanks
Mhossain
 
Well, the way I would handle this is;

1. Create a group policy using a Windows Vista workstation. You will need to
use GPMC.msc on Vista to get access to the vista policy settings/templates.

2. Set the "Documents" folder in "Folder Redirection" to your %homedrive%
variable using basic or advanced redirection - whatever is most suitable.

3. Change the "Videos", "Pictures", and "Music" folders to NOT use the
"Follow documents folder" setting. Use basic or advanced redirection on these
to put them where you want.

4. Link this to the user OU you want to enable the redirection for. That
should be it.

In your scenario, I am struggling to understand your use of "D:". I take it
that this is a physical drive/partition in each or your workstations? If so,
you should not have to share it and connect to it as described in your post.

In our environment, we have set each A.D. user account to use the "Home
folder" settings of;

[] Connect <drive_letter> To: \\server\usershare\username

I am currently working on leveraging this for vista and;

a) Redirect "Documents" to "X:\Documents"
b) Redirect "Pictures", "Music", and "Videos" to "Z:\Pictures" etc

Where X: is the mapped home-folder for the user account, and Z: is a second
local partition on the computers.

We have an existing set of shell folder redirections for Windows XP that
work in a similar way.
 
Thanks for your reply.

Thats the way i was trying to do this but for some reason its not working
right. Well, Here is what I want ------- Roaming Profile for th users and to
reduce the size of the profile, redirect “Documentsâ€, “Contactsâ€, “Desktopâ€,
“Favoritesâ€, “Searches†and “AppData†to their respective “Home†drive and
redirect other folders like “Musicâ€, “Pictures†and “Videos†to their local
“D†drive or other partition.

The users uses Vista PC and the Server is server 2003. Server has two
share, namely "profile" share and "users\home" share.

Here is what I did when I initially ask the question
1. using GPMC created a GPO namely gpo_vista
2. Created 2 security group one is for users and on is for workstations.
3. Added all users under the Users security group and added respective
workstations to workstation group.
4. Using GPMC I have added these two security group to the gpo_vista
5. Set the "Documents" in folder redirection to the home drive(the option
given by the snap-in)
6. Set all the three "Pictures", "Music" and "Videos" to "d:" where "d:" is
the local/ physical drive/partition.

Do I have to create this folders manually before I redirect? As I have
understood it should automatically create these folders.

I have tried other options but couldn't get it work. So, if it is not a
problem for you can you please tell me the step-by-styp how you created the
roaming profile, home drive what all permissions you give to those users and
than for folder redirection what you did.

Thanks again for your time.

Murray Webber said:
Well, the way I would handle this is;

1. Create a group policy using a Windows Vista workstation. You will need to
use GPMC.msc on Vista to get access to the vista policy settings/templates.

2. Set the "Documents" folder in "Folder Redirection" to your %homedrive%
variable using basic or advanced redirection - whatever is most suitable.

3. Change the "Videos", "Pictures", and "Music" folders to NOT use the
"Follow documents folder" setting. Use basic or advanced redirection on these
to put them where you want.

4. Link this to the user OU you want to enable the redirection for. That
should be it.

In your scenario, I am struggling to understand your use of "D:". I take it
that this is a physical drive/partition in each or your workstations? If so,
you should not have to share it and connect to it as described in your post.

In our environment, we have set each A.D. user account to use the "Home
folder" settings of;

[] Connect <drive_letter> To: \\server\usershare\username

I am currently working on leveraging this for vista and;

a) Redirect "Documents" to "X:\Documents"
b) Redirect "Pictures", "Music", and "Videos" to "Z:\Pictures" etc

Where X: is the mapped home-folder for the user account, and Z: is a second
local partition on the computers.

We have an existing set of shell folder redirections for Windows XP that
work in a similar way.
Click to expand...
 
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