migrating users homedrives to new file server

[jslate1980]

Hi I am currently looking at migrating our staff and students to our new fileservers, this would be easy but the previous IT manager at my new school has set the home drive structure as \\Students\year of start\%username%\My Documents\ instead of \\Students\year of start\%username%\.

 

I have two questions:-

1. How has he done this as when I try and add the homedrive location in AD it doesn't allow me to?

2. Is there a way of using robocopy to migrate students homedrives from \%username%\My Documents\ to \%username%\?

 

Jon

[Steve21]

We used robocopy and a custom script to do this, lemme see if I can find mine

 

Steve

[Steve21]

 @echo off
FOR /d %%i in ("*") DO (
echo 1 - We found %%i 
Robocopy Z:\StudentHomeDrives2\14\%%i Y:\StudentHomeDrives2\14\%%i\Documents /MOVE /S /R:2 /W:1 /XD Documents 
)

 

Obviously will need to change your paths etc, but that's how we did it (Would be reverse for you I guess though as we did it to MyDocuments as that's needed to fix other issues

 

Steve

[jslate1980]

What were the issues that caused you to move to \my documents? Just it may be the reason for my current homedrive setup.

[Steve21]

If you don't use a subfolder or make modifications to desktop.ini it'll rename the user folders to Documents

 

So if you have \\myFile\Jim it'll rename it to \\MyFile\Documents for every single folder

 

e.g. Richard Willis – SharePoint Learning Kit Coordinator, SalamanderSoft Owner » How To Stop Home Folders Being Renamed Documents in the Network Share

e.g. Windows 7 Folder Redirection rename the Home folder in "My Documents" - Microsoft Reduce Customer Effort Center - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

e.g. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008/53755-home-folders-renames-my-documents.html

 

Lots of way to fix it but using sub-folders is the simplest

e.g.

 

Steve

[rrrrr]

Backup and restore is the best and safest method of moving to new file server. I dont think robocopy has any file verification built in to prevent possible corruption (i know copying by cmd doesnt)

I just wait for my out of ours dpm backup to take place, then restore with permissions to new location. Then select all users in ad and change home path to \\newserver\students\%username%\ and this is all automatically filled in.

 

I have now put all home directorys on a dfs share so all i need to do in future is add and remove a dfs location. No changing home drive locations

[ITGURU]

use Robocopy every year to copy our year 9 students from our KS3 to KS4 server and never had ant issues with file corruption. Just then-repoint AD to the new location with %username% , grant full control and job done.

 

I was going to go DFS, but yet to as wondered if any way to not have it show sysvol folders when browsing to the root DFS location.

[snagrat]

Hi I am currently looking at migrating our staff and students to our new fileservers, this would be easy but the previous IT manager at my new school has set the home drive structure as \\Students\year of start\%username%\My Documents\ instead of \\Students\year of start\%username%\.

 

I have two questions:-

1. How has he done this as when I try and add the homedrive location in AD it doesn't allow me to?

2. Is there a way of using robocopy to migrate students homedrives from \%username%\My Documents\ to \%username%\?

 

Jon

 

Why doesn't it allow you to add it in AD?

 

Are you sure the sub folder is called My Documents as Windows 7 would rename it to this based on the desktop.ini file.

[ITGuyWestMidlands]

I was going to go DFS, but yet to as wondered if any way to not have it show sysvol folders when browsing to the root DFS location.

 

Not worth worring about really. Theres nothing special in there. Inless your setting local admin passwords via gpo

[jslate1980]

Why doesn't it allow you to add it in AD?

 

Are you sure the sub folder is called My Documents as Windows 7 would rename it to this based on the desktop.ini file.

 

No issues i worked out why ad couldn't do it, all sorted now.

[teejay]

I would also look at creating DFS namespaces, will make it much easier for next time you have to do this.