Re-organsing the file structure of the student shares - implications if any?

[kennysarmy]

A Windows 2003 Server holds our current student home directories:

 

At the top level there is a :

 

D:\Users folder

 

under which are:

 

D:\Users\4200

D:\Users\4300

D:\Users\4400

 

etc

 

Their username is their four digit SIMS admissions number

 

so under D:\Users\4200 there will be

 

00

01

02

03

04

 

folders

 

These are then shared; such as 4200$, 4201$, etc ,etc

 

Also on this server is File Server Resource Manager which controls quotas:

 

A Quota template is applied to the top level folders of:

D:\Users\4200

D:\Users\4300

D:\Users\4400

etc

 

 

A few problems have arisen with this file structure:

 

1. When it comes time to delete left year13 data it's spread all over the place as usernames will be a combination of those that joined the school in year 7, 8, 9 etc. so it can take a while to find each individual student and delete their work.

 

2. Same as above when we delete all year 11's work before they move to the 6th form.

 

3. I am not able to applying different quotas to different year groups. there is just one quota which limits all students to 3Gb.

 

 

If I move to the following structure would it solve my issues and what would I need to do to achieve it, based on there being students in the same year with the same folder name; ie many students can have the same folder name of "01" or "02" for example. When I try and manually rename a folder say from "00" to "5400" windows tells me it wont be shared after I rename it. Could I use some kind of script to extract the share name and use that to rename the folder and then reshare the folder. I could then manually move them in to the right top level folders then re-create the quotas?

 

D:\Users\Year7

D:\Users\Year8

D:\Users\Year9

 

Then under D:\Users\Year7 I would have their individual folder number, so;

D:\Users\Year7\4554

D:\Users\Year7\4555

D:\Users\Year7\4556

[themightymrp]

You could write a script to do this yes, but may I make one suggestion? Rather than calling the folder Year7, Year8 etc I would use the year of entry to the school ie new year 7's would be 2012. Otherwise as they move up the school they are going to be in the wrong folders!

[Linfit]

I would strongly agree with the previous post. It's much easier if the folder names incorporate the nominal year of entry as there is no maintenance overhead at the end of each year. It's also helpful to use the pupil name in some way -much easier to locate the work of a particular student without having to cross reference with a list.

[kennysarmy]

Thanks both.

 

Will see if I can work out a script for this.

 

Will amend the top level folder names to year of entry.

 

I am going to stick with folder names being their SIMS admission number though as I know this will always be unique...