how can i change my home folder location?

C

chronic9

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 18, 2004
Messages
5,854
i run 2 x 80gb SSDs, and i have enough space.

my dads computer has a small SSD that will only have the OS itself on it, and I would like to store all of his files on my server.
the only way I see of doing that is roaming profiles under AD.

I can add the Active directory role on my 2008 server, but for a house of 2 computers... isnt it over kill?

is there another method to move the home folder off the computer safely? without doing registry edits - the only thing i seem to find when googling this topic.
 
Shouldn't the home folder be a redirect or mapped drive that points to a server, that's how its setup where I work. If you crashed the PC you could still move files from the "home folder" location on one of our servers. You could construct his profile on your server get it connected and externally connect the drive to your server and transfer the files while the user is logged off, then log him on. Our user drives at work are just redirects of a "u drive" to a server location. If you do roaming profiles, that is a TON of data then possibly to load upon login.
 
but what about the profile tab when you right click a username and go to properties... profile path, local path.... ?
 
If you go a user's profile properties in AD you want to look at 2 things.

Account tab: which houses the logon name in AD, and the right of that, the domain.
Profile tab: there lies the profile path, in my case this is "\\server_name\profiles\my_profile" The profile path is ONLY to save local settings unique to that user like IE favorites and such, and IS NOT intended for local stroage. We actually have profile sizes capped at 20 MB per user at our hospital.

All that is needed is to designate a shared space for the "U drive" on a server drive (backup and RAID etc, is another story). Now, below that you'll see a "Home Folder" section on the Profile Tab. Tick the "connect" radio button, and choose a drive letter, in my case U: drive. then set the "To:" path

The "To:" path should be another safe location (the shared space, and not on the same server/drive as the profile path if you used one), such as "\\server2\users\my_user" What this does is connect the U Drive letter to that server path for that AD user.

To recap: You have a profie location, and a Home Folder location. Once those are set, you should see that drive upon user logon, amongst any other login scripts you designate.
 
P.S. what alot of people also do, and what we do, is then make the "My Documents" folder redirect to that same server location you set the "U Drive" to. That way, nothing is saved locally, if all works good :D
 
kk sounds good thanks for the info...

is any of this possible without creating a domain? can i just move the location of the my docs,etc onto a mapped drive and thats it?
 
I don't see why you would think you need AD or even roaming profiles to do this. My users at work, for example, have their directories stored on a server, and we sure as hell aren't using roaming profiles.

Anyway, this is a home setup, so why not just get or build a WHS box, if the documents are this important, and use Windows built-in backup? If he's using an older OS, like XP, just use SyncToy to back his files up to a server. If this is a laptop, I wouldn't get into redirecting the folder...I would just use a backup method that can be scheduled.
 
Yes you could just use a mapped drive to a server. I only* mentioned the AD process because he was thinking of adding the roll to his server in the first post.
 
I have aquestion related to this. I have a basic AD domain with roaming profiles set up as kaos said. However, some of the folders in my home directory are being created locally in C:\Users, namely the ones other programs create. Is there a way to prevent this so that the connected drive (H: in my case) IS the home folder (i.e. H: is fully the home folder location, instead of C:\Users\%username% but with redirection of sone foldrs to H:)?

Basically, if I open my Home Folder from Start I want it to open up H: but with the transparency of the home folder. Can this be done? I'm running 7 on all the comps and 2008R2 on the DC.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Last edited:
djBon2112 said:
Bump, trying to get my Q answered :p
Click to expand...

Do you want it to be like H:\Users\%username% ?

I have done something like this on my computer where it is D:\Users\%username%, D:\ being my storage partition on the same drive as C:\
 
sean2k7 said:
Do you want it to be like H:\Users\%username% ?

I have done something like this on my computer where it is D:\Users\%username%, D:\ being my storage partition on the same drive as C:\
Click to expand...

Yes, kinda. H: is mapped to \\DomainController\Users\<Username>

What I want basically is a complete redirect of the user's home folder (i.e. C:\Users\<Username>) to the mapped network drive set in AD UC profiles (mapped to H:). The problem is, Windows keeps putting data in C:\Users. I want nothing in there and everything on H: (all appdata, settings, files, etc.). Can that be done?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I would not recommend doing this is if you manage to. Even when using roaming profiles there is data that is stored locally on purpose. A good example is temp files and browser cache files. Not only will you waste space you might even slow down some programs.
 
You can just right click on folders, go to properties and click Target location and move it to another drive you have, or even a mapped network drive that you auto connect on log in. It can just be a shared folder on your server so there's no need to even bother logging in. Note, this does not work for the actual user folder but the folders within.
 
if he is on xp i would build a whs make a user then right his documents folder and tell it to move it to the user share on the server i do this with my pc and laptop makes life easy and i can expand the space anytime the laptop mainly cos it only has 8gb ssd lol
i have tried this on vista but it wouldent work correctly
 
xenios said:
I would not recommend doing this is if you manage to. Even when using roaming profiles there is data that is stored locally on purpose. A good example is temp files and browser cache files. Not only will you waste space you might even slow down some programs.
Click to expand...

Yea these ones I don't want. The main problem is Windows is for some reason creating a new AppData/Roaming, along with a few other folders, on the local hard disk, instead of on the network drive. I also plan on using offline files, but I want the master copy on the server if you know what I mean.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top