Home Folder?

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OK considering that I have mastered all sorts of concepts in the last few months, this one seems a bit silly, but I don't seem to be able to get a definitive answer.

What effect does designating a 'Home Folder' for a user in AD Users and Computers have??

Eg designating the home folder path as \\myserver\home\%username%

Does this replace 'My Documents'? Or does it move My Documents? and if not, what is the point of doing it?

 

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%username% is a way to change these kind of fields in bulk as well as just simply resolve to the current users account name.

This will define a letter and the location to the users home folder and it will appear in their my computer as a network drive.

If you selected a load of accounts at once there are certain fields you can change in bulk, this is one of them.
If you wanted their home directories in the same root folder you can simply select all the accounts (mark, john and paul )

and enter this in the field

Code:

\\myserver\home\%username%

and apply. When you go back to look at the user entries individually you will see the correct corresponding path.

Code:

\\myserver\home\mark
\\myserver\home\john
\\myserver\home\paul

You have to specifically use a GPO to redirect the users My Docs to the home folder it doesn't happen automatically.

 

By default, a user's documents and files are saved to their local My Documents. Designating a home folder for users directs saving their files away from the local My Documents to a folder on a network location, typically a file server.

The benefits of a home folder is:

1. It centralises users' saved files, so all saved files are in one location.
2. It makes backing up users' saved files much easier. Now, all that's needed to be done to backup all users' saved files is to run a scheduled backup on the file server.
3. It makes users' saved files more secure. All their saved files are stored on a server, which will be much more secure than users' workstations.

 

OK so do I understand that a 'home folder' is a separate thing to 'my documents'. And once designated, documents will automatically save there or does that need the GPO to arrange?

 

It maps a drive to the destination specified in the user profile, it doesnt redirect my documents or change a user default save location (not sure if this is different in server 2008 ), this would need to be set up separately.

 

This is what happens:

1) you create a user
2) the user saves files into c:\my documents
3) one day you modify their user account so that their home folder is \\server\share\folder
4) now when the user saves files, they are saved to the network location
5) the previously saved files are still in c:\my documents
6) so you make a GPO which moves all the contents of their local mydocs to the server share
7) now the user has access to their old docs which used to be on their work PC, and they also have access to their new docs, because all of them are saved on the server

 

Thanks all think I got it although just one thing...

These two statements appear to contradict each other?? Or am I just being thick?

 

They mean the network location being the one the the My documents are redirected to.

 

The two statements are different, anytime i have setup a home folder, all it has done is map a network drive, nothing else.

 

I have had a play with this today. OK so you create a user and designate a drive letter and path in the user profile. This in turn creates the folder in the network share.

Then what?? The drive letter doesn't show up anywhere and the user has to navigate himself to the network share and create a mapping where he is given the option to give the mapping a drive letter??? So what was the point of doing it before. And theres also no default option to save there

I hate to get hung up on a fairly minor point, but surely the same result could be reached by creating said share and just telling users that thats where they have to save their work to. Which is pretty much what they are doing anyway.

I'm a very practical person and get easily confused by things that crop up that have no apparent use. Or am I still missing summat?

 

Did you set the drive letter in the user account settings when setting up the home folder?

 

Yes I did. You click the radio button, select a drive letter and indicate the path on the file server. In my case, \\SVR2003\Home\fbloggs

 

I assume you're setting up the home folder for the user through the AD Users and Computers console? And for the Home Folder section, you're choosing the Connect option, not Local path?

Try using the Local path setting and entering a UNC path e.g. \\servername\sharename. The user's files will save transparently to that specified location. Mapping a drive letter to the network location is mainly for the user to locate his files to open, not to save. And the user doesn't need to set up the drive mapping himself; the network admin should have a script that does that for him. The script should run when the user logs on to his workstation.

 

It doesn't work if you do it the 'local path' way, it just brings up an error message (see below).

OK if I do this...


There is a User1 folder created in the right place although the Z: disappears never to be seen again so what is the point of designating it?? And there is no option to save to it unless you give it the whole path.

But if I do this...


I get an error message thus...


OK I am now assuming that designating the folder is only part of the job. You have to do other things to point a user at his home folder. Which begs the question again, what damn use is it???

 

The problem is that I'm NOT getting the Z: drive listed in My Computer on the client machine which is what I mean by it disappears never to be seen again

 

Create a new user and set up the home folder then log in, it could be cached credentials that's causing the issue.