Changing a share 'name' without losing the share or messing with permissions...?

[Koldov]

This is a very sheepish post... and probably something I should know....

 

We have a share on the server, a very important share 'admin', with lots of secret info and lots of VIP members...

 

It also has many sub-folders shared only to specific people with names like 'confidential' and is shared with both specific users and security groups and is mapped through various methods (both manually and GPO over the years).

 

It's a very old share (set-up before I started) and is absolutely massive and the sharing permissions are a bit of a mess.

 

First thing I would like to do if possible is change the share 'name' to add the $, so it isn't visible whilst casually browsing the network.

 

I'm pretty certain all the permissions are doing their job just fine and I'm not overly worried about it being visible, but it's just one of those things that irks me and I'd like to sort it out if I can.

 

However, I can live with it if it is going to be a real headache or massive amounts of work with potential data loss or users being locked out.

[Chaniel]

I am 98% certain that you would have to stop the share and recreate it with the new name. Your NTFS permissions will remain intact, but you can't rename shares themselves.

 

A folder can be shared multiple times under different names though so to prevent disruption you could create a new share for the same folder called "name$", change all your GPO drive mapping etc to point the new hidden share and then after a couple days/week, remove the old share.

While you're at it, I would go through the permissions and make sure to migrate anyone that is added individually on a folder away and put them in a group. If you do this all beforehand, you can then wait a couple days then remove the individual permissions and no one will lose access as group memberships would've updated etc.

 

The way I do it is have a few groups called "HR-Read" or "HR-Modify" and then give those group permissions, and for users then put them in the correct group.

[KK20]

you can add multiple share names to a folder. simply add a new share name and remove the old one. Right click the folder, click properties, click sharing then advanced sharing, "add" a new share name (admin$ for example), then select the old share name and click remove. Remove will be greyed out until you add a new share.