Home folders going missing

[Gaz]

I've had 2 students come up to me today both with missing home folders. They appear to have been removed/deleted from the home folder directory.

To get them back I am manually creating the folder again and restoring it from a shadow copy, but the shadow copy only lets me restore files from before Christmas. Anything newer than that (2013) and it says its missing.

 

This is getting rather worrying now. Looking at my other server there are 534 home folders and on this server (2008 r2) there are 478 thats an inconsistancy of 56 folders that may be missing.

 

I've disabled folder redirection as that was causing some issues but I've no idea whats gone on here. The event logs don't have any errors relating to this issue.

[Gaz]

Anyone? I've had a few more students with missing folders. I've no idea why its happening and don't think anything has been breached and theres no virus's on the server that I know of (full scan run)

[Steve21]

Well only thing that springs to mind is "broken" redirection, remember a few other threads on here about people redirecting to \server\docs etc, rather than \server\docs\%username% and they were overwriting too.

 

Any more info on your redirections etc?

 

Steve

[Gaz]

Redirection is now off but it was (my docs etc) redirected to \\Server\students\%username%

[sted]

i saw this with one profile (nursery user so nobody complained i just found it by accident). They had a mandatory profile which had been edited to point my docs etc at u:\, u:\pictures etc AND had redirection set thought i was going mad at first created folder logged in no home folder rdp to server home folder deleted recreated went again no profile fine, roaming profile fine, mandatory home golder gone

[Gaz]

I'm not using roaming or mandatory profiles, they are all local profiles. (I'll be moving to roaming over the summer)

 

It certainly sounds like folder redirection has messed something up. My plan is to just recreate the folders as the users approach me and restore from shadow copies.

Without knowing what exactly went wrong with the redirection though its hard to know what I've got to do so it doesn't happen again should I want to use folder redirection.

[Netman]

Had something similar recently too - after testing a new file server by pointing home folder to new server then put it back to old server - some of our older AD accounts didn't seem to like this and the docs would be deleted and also the user's permissions would be removed when they logged in - I implemented the fix here Can PowerShell restore previous versions of files/folders via Volume Shadow Services (VSS)?. I set the group policy setting right at the bottom of that page and it seems to have fixed it for me, although I've had to copy stuff back from shadow copies and fix permissions for about 10 pupils who logged on before I applied that fix... might not be the same problem but might help...

[Gaz]

Hmm you may be onto something Netman. I did recently change the homefolder path from \\domain\students\ to \\server.domain.local\students\ I didn't think that would make a difference to anything though.

[DMcCoy]

Hmm you may be onto something Netman. I did recently change the homefolder path from \\domain\students\ to \\server.domain.local\students\ I didn't think that would make a difference to anything though.

 

If you use short name AND fqdn with folder redirection and have move enabled, windows doesn't recognise the paths as being the same and "moves" them (as in deletes them all!)

 

Edit: ah yes, netmans thread has the GPO option to fix it it mentioned.

Edited January 15, 2013 by DMcCoy

[psydii]

Folder Redirection functionality "Move Content to new location" can lead to dataloss

 

There are lots and lots of other ways folder redirection and offline files can mess you up. I suggest that you also apply the hotfixes included in:

A new file that has the same file name as a ghost file can be created without displaying a prompt on a Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based client computer

Folder Redirection feature does not synchronize a file in a redirected folder on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

Folder redirection policy fails after you redirect a folder to a different sub folder in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

And the usual performance updates referenced here:

List of Performance hotfixes post SP1 for Windows 7 SP1 - The troubleshooters and problem solvers... - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

[Stuart_C]

I'd also consider moving the users documents to "\\server\share\%username%\documents" or something.

Win7 Likes to rename the documents folder "My documents" and it's pain when you go to \\server\share\ and see 400 odd "My Documents" folders with no idea who they belong to.

[Gaz]

I'd also consider moving the users documents to "\\server\share\%username%\documents" or something.

Win7 Likes to rename the documents folder "My documents" and it's pain when you go to \\server\share\ and see 400 odd "My Documents" folders with no idea who they belong to.

 

I've disabled it now. Theres no real reason for my docs to be redirected on my network so they can just store stuff in their home folder.

Yeah I experienced the "My Documents" folder thing too, you can find out who it belongs too if you add the "Filename" column but that only works on Server 2008 R2 (and maybe non R2) deleting desktop.ini inside the folder will change it back again.

Edited January 16, 2013 by Gaz