Replace Home Areas with OneDrive

[Davida1992]

Hi all,

 

So a bit of background. We have several windows servers onsite running as file servers with shares for users home areas. Each user gets a drive mapped on login (H:) and inside it they can save their files so that they roam from PC to PC. We also use folder redirection to ensure downloads, documents, pictures etc is all redirected to the same H: drive. This means that if you look at the properties on the "Documents" folder for example and show the "Locations" tab, it actually shows the UNC path to the servers vs it being on the local machine.

 

We have approx 6TB at least of student home areas in total, so we are looking to reclaim that space by having students use their OneDrive account instead. Students already have access to OneDrive and I have applied some GPOs so that known folders are automatically synchronised with OneDrive silently. I've limited bandwidth usage for sync and I've configured a few other basic policies. Unfortunately I've fallen at the first hurdle It looks like it is attempting to sync, but it just fails with "the documents folder contains other important folders and isn't supported for file backup folder redirection." After doing some digging, testing with multiple users etc, I THINK this is because we are using folder redirection which it doesn't seem to like.

 

The easiest solution I can think of would be to turn OFF folder redirection, and set student home areas to a different drive letter such as Z: and call it "Legacy Home Area". The students can then via their old data, it'll be read only. Moving forward anything that they store anywhere else - Desktop, Documents etc will just be sync'd up to OneDrive.

 

Sounds relatively easy, but like everything, I'm sure it won't be. That being said, what are peoples thoughts, and has anyone managed to achieve a sync via scripting or something similar? For new students starting in September, they won't even have a home area so that is a bonus, no legacy files, just OneDrive moving forward

 

Thanks

Edited July 20, 2020 by Davida1992

[jblackburnHWGA]

This is the best time to do the migration for students. You need the sharepoint migration tool to move the docs from on prem to cloud

 

I used this guide for the onedrive settings

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/208871-replacing-network-area-my-docs-onedrive.html

 

And i used this website to sort settings for Onedrive so it loads from program files rather than appdata which greatly helps login times

 

https://byteben.com/bb/installing-th...on-experience/

 

In regards to mapping it as a drive I would drop the mapping and live a simple life. Drive mapping for personal spaces is something thats not really necessary anymore. The onedrive space is very obvious and if you map it to documents anyway they wont save on the machines and lose work

Edited July 20, 2020 by jblackburnHWGA

[Davida1992]

This is the best time to do the migration for students. You need the sharepoint migration tool to move the docs from on prem to cloud

 

I used this guide for the onedrive settings

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/208871-replacing-network-area-my-docs-onedrive.html

 

And i used this website to sort settings for Onedrive so it loads from program files rather than appdata which greatly helps login times

 

https://byteben.com/bb/installing-th...on-experience/

 

In regards to mapping it as a drive I would drop the mapping and live a simple life. Drive mapping for personal spaces is something thats not really necessary anymore. The onedrive space is very obvious and if you map it to documents anyway they wont save on the machines and lose work

Thanks so much for your help. The Migration tool is working at the moment, but it is very slow. Doing some digging online though, it looks as if they rate limit it Microsoft's end, and I don't think we will be able to increase the speed, it'll just be a waiting game I think.

 

I have matched the policies with a few extras so thank you for your help on that. The final link you sent for launching it via Program files seems to be dead though, do you have an alternative, I would like to read up on that.

 

Thanks for your help so far on this.

[jblackburnHWGA]

Yes its very much a set it over night task

 

the second website basically just said install using /allusers switch

 

"%~DP0onedrivesetup.exe" /AllUsers

 

The add in a task sequence step in SCCM to run the following powershell script

 

#Create PSDrive for HKU

New-PSDrive -PSProvider Registry -Name HKUDefaultHive -Root HKEY_USERS

 

#Load Default User Hive

Reg Load "HKU\DefaultHive" "C:\Users\Default\NTUser.dat"

 

#Set OneDriveSetup Variable

$OneDriveSetup = Get-ItemProperty "HKUDefaultHive:\DefaultHive\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" | Select -ExpandProperty "OneDriveSetup"

 

#If Variable returns True, remove the OneDriveSetup Value

If ($OneDriveSetup) { Remove-ItemProperty -Path "HKUDefaultHive:\DefaultHive\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" -Name "OneDriveSetup" }

 

#Unload Hive

Reg Unload "HKU\DefaultHive"

 

#Remove PSDrive HKUDefaultHive

Remove-PSDrive "HKUDefaultHive"

Edited July 23, 2020 by jblackburnHWGA

[TriggerHappyUK]

The final link you sent for launching it via Program files seems to be dead though, do you have an alternative, I would like to read up on that.

 

I think this is it:

 

https://byteben.com/bb/installing-the-onedrive-sync-client-in-per-machine-mode-during-your-task-sequence-for-a-lightening-fast-first-logon-experience/

 

htt ps :// byteben.com/bb/installing-the-onedrive-sync-client-in-per-machine-mode-during-your-task-sequence-for-a-lightening-fast-first-logon-experience/

[Davida1992]

Thanks for your help so far on this. Things are looking good with the policies in place. We are ready to remove the Home Area path from students in the next few days hopefully. The migration is taking place (although, still very slow).

 

Quick question/concern though. We have some students that work with large files and media, perhaps several gigabytes in size. Our concern is that a student will save a file locally on their machine - lets say 1GB in size. Immediately after saving, they log off, not allowing the files to sync fully to OneDrive. This is going to be a problem when they go to the next PC, their file will potentially be lost, especially since we wipe local profiles after 14 days, in some cases a student may not even notice that their files are, or have been missing. Has anyone experienced this. Or can OneDrive continue to sync after log off?

[jblackburnHWGA]

It will continue to sync on next log on but this is the issue especially if they don't log in before the profile gets wiped. Its in the cons list basically but shouldn't cause you too many issues. There are very few lessons that will be saving large 1gb files like this. The best way to handle it is to make sure the teacher and the student is educated to the changes. They need to know how to check their file has been uploaded using the OneDrive icon on the task bar and also what the little icons in the file explorer mean. Our IT teachers are doing this with students first lesson back to pass on the changes and we've sent an e-mail giving some details to all students

You can't be responsible for loss of data if the user isn't following guidance. For smaller files its no problem for bigger files the teacher needs to be reminding them to save through the lesson and giving them a good 5 - 10 minutes at the end of lesson to upload large files. Edits to large files don't take as long as well so saving as they go will help.

[Davida1992]

Thanks, that is fine. We have approx 8k users, and there are likely only going to be certain departments that suffer from this type of issue. I'm expecting media, art and film. I only really thought about this after finding that some of our students home areas are bigger tan 50GB which was quite a surprise. We don't limit our students storage space, we're fairly relaxed with them on that sort of thing. There is a User Voice for this though, so I did vote. Hopefully it won't stop us going ahead since there has been a fair amount of time invested in this already to make this function.

https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/913522-onedrive-on-windows/suggestions/37569811-no-logoff-until-sync-is-complete

 

We've also edited our account creation script so that the OneDrive storage is provisioned prior to first login to ensure that everything is going to be setup and ready for the new students due in September.

[Davida1992]

Having a few issues so far...

 

So on login, some devices seem to be really quick at getting OneDrive to load. Within 20 seconds or so the popup appears saying that it is "Syncing to OneDrive". Others are taking just over a minute.

 

But it looks like on login, its opening things like Papercut (printing app), then installing MS Teams, then setting up OneDrive after that. I'm not sure why Microsoft want to have things installed on a per user basis instead of all users.

 

Also, uploading files to onedrive seems quick enough, I can get a 1GB file up there in about 30 seconds.

 

But when trying to download the same file back to a PC, its maxing out at a much slower speed, sitting at 3.55MB/s. Does anyone else experience this? Our limits are set much higher.

 

 

[titch]

Having a few issues so far...

 

So on login, some devices seem to be really quick at getting OneDrive to load. Within 20 seconds or so the popup appears saying that it is "Syncing to OneDrive". Others are taking just over a minute.

 

But it looks like on login, its opening things like Papercut (printing app), then installing MS Teams, then setting up OneDrive after that. I'm not sure why Microsoft want to have things installed on a per user basis instead of all users.

 

Also, uploading files to onedrive seems quick enough, I can get a 1GB file up there in about 30 seconds.

 

But when trying to download the same file back to a PC, its maxing out at a much slower speed, sitting at 3.55MB/s. Does anyone else experience this? Our limits are set much higher.

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]58737[/ATTACH]

When installing OneDrive for business (don't use built in client) install it with the switch to install for all users. We were scratching our heads with this one also. I can't remember the exact command but you should now be able to sort it with that clue.

[Wubbalubbadub]

When installing OneDrive for business (don't use built in client) install it with the switch to install for all users. We were scratching our heads with this one also. I can't remember the exact command but you should now be able to sort it with that clue.

OneDriveclient.exe /allusers

[Davida1992]

Thanks, I'll try this. And what do people think about the transfer speed issue? Anyone else experienced any sort of capping like this?

[armadillo]

Thanks, I'll try this. And what do people think about the transfer speed issue? Anyone else experienced any sort of capping like this?[

 

Hi, can you please let me know If you sorted all issue with OneDrive and if there is anything else that needs to improve to get it all mapped properly and speed up the process for users. In landing to get OneDrive mapped as users’ home drive.

Thanks