Offline files filling up hard drive

[OverWorked]

Is there any way of automatically deleting offline copies of files for user who haven't logged onto XP for a while?

 

I've got staff laptops with 20GB HDDs filled to the point of being unusable with docs from staff who logged on once months ago to take a register.

 

This is the third time recently I've had to go through and manually deleted their profiles and offline files.

 

Is there any way of doing this automatically, say for an account that hasn't been used for a month?

 

I thought of just creating an account just for staff to use for doing registers on other people's laptops, but this would just make things more complex for them and they wouldn't stick to it anyway.

[7andY]

I use Robocopy.exe set to move any files over 400 days old (though you can set it to what you like). I don't delete the files, just move them off the shared areas, wait for another 3 months, and, if no-one screams, delete them by hand.

 

7&Y

[plexer]

Thats completely different to dealing with cached files on a laptop if you delete them from the share on the server and a laptop with a locally cached copy is connected it will copy it's version of the file to the server.

 

Ben

[speckytecky]

Is there any way of automatically deleting offline copies of files for user who haven't logged onto XP for a while?

 

I've got staff laptops with 20GB HDDs filled to the point of being unusable with docs from staff who logged on once months ago to take a register.

 

This is the third time recently I've had to go through and manually deleted their profiles and offline files.

 

Is there any way of doing this automatically, say for an account that hasn't been used for a month?

 

I thought of just creating an account just for staff to use for doing registers on other people's laptops, but this would just make things more complex for them and they wouldn't stick to it anyway.

 

Disable Offline Files perhaps on those specific laptops?

[OverWorked]

Thanks for the replies, but nothing useful yet. I don't think it's possible.

 

Disabling offline files wouldn't work because the staff need to take their laptops home and have their docs there for them. Giving them big flash drives and telling them to use them would just cause more problems.

 

Offline files works great if a machine is only used by one person. There doesn't seem to be anything in XP to deal with documents from more users than the hdd has space for.

[OverWorked]

Disable Offline Files perhaps on those specific laptops?

 

That's given me an idea, though. I could use loopback-processing GPO to disable offline files for everyone except certain users. I'll give it a try.

[PiqueABoo]

There's an MS KB somewhere telling you how to create and only "pin"/cache files for a primary user (you set an account as a Primary User on a box with a few regedits).

[matt40k]

Download details: User Profile Deletion Utility (Delprof.exe)

 

Set it as a scheduled task, will delete all local profiles that are XYZ days old, minus All users etc.

[OverWorked]

Thanks matt40k. I didn't try delprof. Does deleting the profile with delprof also delete the user's files in the offline files folder? I didn't know it did.

 

Anyway: I gave her another laptop for other staff who use the room, and told here to keep her own laptop to herself. Not an ideal solution and was only possible because I had a redundant laptop.

 

I found out the quick way of resetting the offline files cache in MS KB 230738, though. It's also mentioned here in EduGeek. I cleared up 20GB instantly, and greatly speeded up the laptop.