Automated Deletion of Downloads Folder

[enjay]

I'm considering scripting something to delete anything more than a month (?) old in everyone's Downloads folder, as these are getting clogged up with stuff which most people have moved elsewhere and then forgotten ever existed in Downloads too. Obviously, staff would be told we'd be doing this. Am I opening myself up to a whole world of pain or is this a good idea?

[Sagima]

Sounds like a great idea

[IWDave]

Just make sure that they get ample warning; the only other problem you may face, apart from the backlash, is that they will save it somewhere else.

[ricki]

Are you running out of space if your not lash back is not worth it Richard

[Steve21]

Don't see the need really. If it's within their set quota and they want to leave bits in there why not? All that would happen is they move everything to another folder if you force delete stuff :s

 

Steve

[ITGURU]

As I regularly scan our staff roaming profiles, the downloads folder is always the biggest with files dating back years as never had to reset the profiles with duplicate files ending in (1), (2) etc when they open resources several times.

All I did was took a backup of all profiles - excluded the 'downloads' folder from the profile and had ZERO complaints as me where the files are. backup was just in-case.

The folder doesn't appear in explorer and the only way would be to manually navigate to C:\users\profile\downloads to find the files.

If they want to keep anything, they will choose 'save' and save to their area.

[enjay]

Don't see the need really. If it's within their set quota and they want to leave bits in there why not? All that would happen is they move everything to another folder if you force delete stuff :s

 

Disk space is certainly a factor; we have the capacity to store this stuff, but we do pay by the GB for our data usage (file servers are in a remote datacentre)

 

I'm also trying to save them some of housekeeping hassle - they have better things to do, I have better things to do than check usage and nag people. Also, one of the reasons people have so much stuff in Downloads is because of Google Drive, so as the problem is in part of my making, I would like to be part of the solution too.