Maintaining Shared areas

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering how everyone manages and maintains the relevant shared areas you might have? we have 3 large shared folders but there is a lot of confusion over which folders should be used and when. We have a staff one, a student one and a general one but files end up everywhere. There is a lot of duplication and I cannot rely on staff to clean up their own areas so I would like to do it for them.

 

There is a problem of course, when were the files last used? well I re-enabled last access date so things will start to update now but I don't really want to wait a year to find out what I can delete.

 

Is there a more reliable way of checking this? I could go off date modified but even that doesn't prove the files arent being used.

[3s-gtech]

De-duplication enabled helps massively

I create sub-folders in each share which the relevant subject files a plonked into - staff/students cannot create root folders so that helps to keep it tidier

I keep an eye on Treesize every so often, looking at what is causing the most problems

I use Handbrake on large media files (and then test them before deleting the original)

I create year folders in subject folders where they put a lot of media files (e.g. 16-17) then move these folders into an archive folder in each area once those students have left. After twelve months this is copied off to an 'archive' NAS.

I search through for large files and archive them if they haven't been touched for ages.

I've reduced the number of shares - many were just dumping grounds for tat.

[jthompson]

We have two shared areas: one is for staff only (some large departmental folders in there, schemes of work, etc.) and the other gives students read-only access (used for lesson resources that they can take a copy of).

The top levels of the staff area are tightly controlled, with staff unable to move, rename, delete or create new files & folders in the top couple of levels.

Once it gets down into specific faculties, the permissions are restricted to only allow members of those faculties to modify files & folders. This is partly to limit the potential exposure to a ransomware infections, but also to limit the potential for the inevitable accidental drag&drop actions.

One gets to know these areas quite well, and where camera memory card dumps usually get made (I resize most digital photos to less than 1MB, and transcode any 1080p or 720p videos down to 480p in most cases).

 

To keep on top of them, I use WatchDISK to scan each morning and alert me if there are any folders that have increased by 100MB or more (the choice is yours) since the last scan. That's been invaluable for keeping on top of sudden dumps of files, or even accidental moves. I can strongly recommend WatchDISK, and haven't ever seen anything else that does what it does.

 

To resize photos, I use the Windows Image Resizer Powertoy (or modern equivalent of). Easiest batch resizer going imho, and works nicely on Explorer search results, too, which is a big timesaver. Once I've resized a batch of images, I use Attribute Changer to change the 'last modified' date of the files to whatever each images 'date taken' value is in its EXIF data. Nobody ever seems to notice, or if they have, they're not bothered enough to mention it.

Similarly with large framesize videos, I'll use Format Factory (watch for toolbars during installation) to bump them down to 480p if appropriate. That's an amazing batch transcoder, and you can drag Explorer search results into it to build a queue.

 

The staff area is generally more organised, with the messy bits being down to departments to sort out for themselves. The share that students can access is a little more messy and full of abandoned folders. I've therefore set up an annual job in FSRM that will expire any items older than a few years (set to run at the end of each August). The files that get expired are removed from the main share, but made available to staff for the rest of the year if they want to copy anything back. The first time that ran it saved a huge amount of space. I then use Remove Empty Directories to clear out empty folders (of which there are usually plenty).

Edited May 18, 2017 by jthompson
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[jthompson]

I'd also recommend boning up on the Windows Search syntax. That's really useful for picking out files that you want to process.

 

Some of my most used terms are along the lines of :

type:=.jpg size:>800KB -folder:"Scans"

frameheight:>700

type:=.pptx size:>100MB <----- we seem to get lots of those!

[Rob_D]

At my last place all we had shared resource folders for things like school music, song lyrics, templates, logos and the like. Generally this is stuff that won't get deleted, but was heavily curated using file restriction policies and the like.

 

Then working folders (one for the staff and one for each year group) that were divided into academic years, where the teachers put all their worksheets, mark schemes and assorted junk. If staff wanted something to carry over from a previous year then they copied it into the current year. Anything older that 3 years (determined by location) got deleted.

[jonnykewell1]

I've just been asked this week to look at tidying up our staff shared area. I'm looking at some Root folders for departments and then setting NTFS permissions on those folders for the relevant departments. We already have security groups in place for other things so I can hopefully utilize these which should speed up the process. It's just how I go about sorting the old data from current or should I say getting staff to sort out their data. Do you think making them move it temporarily into their own user drives would be a better option then on a certain deadline delete the data (make sure it's backed up), create the structure and then let them copy their stuff back into the correct department folders would be best? I would certainly be looking into De-duplication if possible too as i've heard it can save tons of space.

[ozydave]

I've just been asked this week to look at tidying up our staff shared area. I'm looking at some Root folders for departments and then setting NTFS permissions on those folders for the relevant departments. We already have security groups in place for other things so I can hopefully utilize these which should speed up the process. It's just how I go about sorting the old data from current or should I say getting staff to sort out their data. Do you think making them move it temporarily into their own user drives would be a better option then on a certain deadline delete the data (make sure it's backed up), create the structure and then let them copy their stuff back into the correct department folders would be best? I would certainly be looking into De-duplication if possible too as i've heard it can save tons of space.

 

Maybe if you have space and virtual environment, create another disk with the folder structure for departments you want then make the original shared area read only. Give them a dead line to copy what they need to the new area.

[jthompson]

Then working folders (one for the staff and one for each year group) that were divided into academic years

 

I like this idea of a separate share/folder for each cohort. That would surely reduce the mess compared to one big share for all the students.

[jonnykewell1]

I like that. Storage is something we have plenty of so I'll look at that thanks.

[Joanne]

I have Pupil Shared and Staff Shared. Pupil Shared gets archived onto a USB HDD every summer and I archive photos/videos from Staff Shared.

 

Definitely get an archive drive, be it USB or NAS. Then if you get rid of something someone needs, you can easily put it back.