Keeping Staff Shared Drives Clean?

[Steve21]

Does the server need to restart to pick up the change?

 

I'd assume you do, but don't deal much with the server-side here.

 

And I'd guess the last accessed time for files would be the time you created them, if it's disabled? or are some updating and some not?

 

Steve

[enjay]

Okay. I've scheduled a restart for tonight and will try again tomorrow...

[enjay]

And I'd guess the last accessed time for files would be the time you created them, if it's disabled? or are some updating and some not?

 

Seems to be the same as the last modified date.

[Steve21]

PS - Anyone know how to have this kind of thing running in Windows ? - be handy that kind of thing when we move to AD, we use it quite alot and when we dump Netware wont have it anymore ?

 

I know it's not exactly how you want it, but generally we do it by looking at the Security details.

 

And it's by default Windows setup, not extra software.

 

(Random file on our shared drive)

 

Shows username etc etc. (Obviously got to hide it but meh)

 

That kind of thing you're after?

 

Steve

Edited April 4, 2011 by Steve21

[Flakes]

It's not our staff shared drives which need to be keep clean it's the students, it's always loaded with games and other such things that shouldn't be on there, we always catch who does it because we are running Netware, this means that if you right click on the file and click properties it shows us who owns the file - usually a students username a bit like the pic below, very handy actually.

 

http://www.ndsu.edu/uploads/RTEmagicC_75e5b773bc.jpg.jpg

 

PS - Anyone know how to have this kind of thing running in Windows ? - be handy that kind of thing when we move to AD, we use it quite alot and when we dump Netware wont have it anymore ?

 

view -> Details.

 

right click the bar which contains "filename", "Date" etc, and select "More..." then tick "owner".

[cpjitservices]

Yeah never thought of tat actually - cheers! to be honest because we look at the drives on our Admin workstations I thought it would just tell us that Admins owned the file but looking it does tell us the username of who put the file there.

[cpjitservices]

nice one flakes I don't even have to click properties

[enjay]

Server restarted, and everything's working now.

 

Next problem - right-clicking a file and checking the properties appears to count as accessing it making it rather hard to see when files were genuinely last used.

[Steve21]

Server restarted, and everything's working now.

 

Next problem - right-clicking a file and checking the properties appears to count as accessing it making it rather hard to see when files were genuinely last used.

 

You sure it's not something stupid like indexing, or autobackups etc? Right clicking it shouldn't affect the last accessed file at all.

 

Edit - Other option is Turn on "Details - Date Accessed" in your explorer folder view thigny If you know what I mean

 

Steve

[enjay]

Let me check I've got this straight - I've run the script as a test (i.e. just logging), and got the following log file:

 

Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras

Dirs : 23547 23546 1 0 0 0

Files : 94358 49749 44609 0 0 0

Bytes : 50.827 g 17.088 g 33.739 g 0 0 0

Times : 0:01:41 0:00:00 0:00:00 0:01:41

 

Sorry, that doesn't paste very well, but you can at least see the numbers. Does that really mean that 17GB of files haven't been accessed in the specified date range?!

[enjay]

You sure it's not something stupid like indexing, or autobackups etc? Right clicking it shouldn't affect the last accessed file at all

 

Yeah positive, the 'last access date' is only a few seconds ago. Hang on, does that mean that a backup is going to re-stamp every file, too?

 

Other option is Turn on "Details - Date Accessed" in your explorer folder view thigny If you know what I mean

 

Good idea, thanks.

[srochford]

Server restarted, and everything's working now.

 

Next problem - right-clicking a file and checking the properties appears to count as accessing it making it rather hard to see when files were genuinely last used.

 

And that's why it's turned off by default - it doesn't really give you any useful info (it will be affected by backup software, scheduled virus scans, anything reading the file properties and so on)

 

I don't think there's any good way you can get this data - what you want is something which records when a file was last accessed by a genuine user and not by a server side process. File auditing can give you this but not in any nice way (I think!)

[Steve21]

Yeah positive, the 'last access date' is only a few seconds ago. Hang on, does that mean that a backup is going to re-stamp every file, too?

 

 

Generally it's "viewing, copied, moved" that changes it. But without knowing your setup, silly things like on access scans/auto backup blahblah etc etc, "may" view the file if you click on it? Remember even a virus scan "accesses" file.

 

I assume if you try it on a seperate computer, not connected to network it works normally showing right one? Might be worth checking.

 

Steve

[enjay]

Your earlier suggestion of adding the "date accessed" column works fine, I'm just concerned now that the weekly full backup is going to access every file and therefore make this meaningless. Back-to-back meetings now until lunch, but I'll run a test backup this afternoon and see what happens...

[enjay]

right-clicking a file and checking the properties appears to count as accessing it

 

That was from the server itself and my Windows 7 PC. Doing it from an XP client gives a genuine date the first time you do it, and then if you look at the same file again the date has been updated to now.

[enjay]

Okay, managed to steal a few minutes - our backups don't count as accessing the files (possibly because they're using MS volume shadow copy?) so we might be in business here...

[Steve21]

Okay, managed to steal a few minutes - our backups don't count as accessing the files (possibly because they're using MS volume shadow copy?) so we might be in business here...

 

Awesome Well keep us updated, would be nice to see how it goes for future ref.

 

Steve

[7andY]

I use a similar Robocopy script run on a schedule on the first Sunday of every month - but they still seem to be adding more than I can delete!!!

[farquea]

thought i had this working but dont... Have 3 drives, 2 are on our file server 1 on ur Applications server. I ran the script first on the application server and it copied 600MB of data that apparently hasnt been access in the last 2 years. Did the same on my other 2 drives and it copied a handful of folders, which i know is not right. Now on every folder in the "last accessed" field it has the time i ran the script at, so pretty stuck!

Anyone had this problem, anything i can do?

 

Just realised, my Q: drive which the script worked fine on, doesnt have shadow copy running on it. The other 2 drives do, so i'm assuming thats what has messed up the "Last Access" field. any way around this or am i buggered?

Edited April 8, 2011 by farquea