Question about disk quotas.

[Kyle]

I have been reading about disk quotas because one of the Primary Schools heads has asked me to look into bringing it in his school. The current set up is all the users home directories are on one server split into year groups. The server is very old and slow and a new one is currently being purchased (should arrive soon). From what i can gather Quotas need to be in place on the drive before the users files are put on there ( i know if you implement quotas on a current drive that holds the home directories then it does not take into account the current files they have saved, which seems a bit pointlles)

I wondered what could be possible to set up on the new server.

If i set up Quotas on the drive of the new server and add all the users into the quota, can i then,

1, Copy/restore from back up/ move all the current users home directories to the new drive on the new server?
2 Will this work so that the users folders will be picked up by the quota?
3. Is there any other way to do this?

I know i could come in with a problem if i set the original quota to low and some users folders will not then copy over. Can you set the Quota high and then once moved all of the folders lower the quota?

I have never worked with Quotas and would like to hear some feed back from you experts please. Especially people who have moved from a none Quota drive to a Quota drive.

[Norphy]

Windows 2000/2003 file quotaing is done by file ownership. As long as the backup/restore process you're using backs up file permissions and ownerships, you'll be fine. If you purchase a third party quotaing system like Veritas Storage Exec, you can quota folders but that is more of a PITA to set up

Really, it is just a matter of formatting a volume, setting up quotaing on it and restoring your files to the new volume.

[steve]

If you can go with 2003 R2, the quota system on this is much more flexible - you can set quotas per directory, which you can automate this across existing user folders. It doesn't depend on file ownership.

[tarquel]

Any MS guide on that steve? I noticed it earlier on today [the new quota thing in R2] but was reluctant to "play" with it hehe

Nath.

[steve]

A nice technet article that covers the basics here

Its pretty easy to get into, setup your quota templates first, apply them to the path using the auto apply to existing.

[ChrisH]

Any MS guide on that steve? I noticed it earlier on today [the new quota thing in R2] but was reluctant to "play" with it hehe

Nath.

Get Minasi's new book as detailed in the Books and manuals section. Its only £18 and covers all the new features.

[john]

and don't forget to order it via our amazilla / amazon shop thingy to donate back to Edugeek - http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Amazilla