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Moving My Documents Folder

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by onell 1 view

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On systems running Windows 2000 and XP Professional the ?My Documents? folder defaults to the C drive. Most if not all the new PCs come with a small C and a large D partition. I have PCs where up to 15 people share the same PC (roaming profiles are not used). After a while I get calls from users saying that they are not able to save documents because there is no drive space available. I know that the user can move/redirect their own ?My Documents? folder to another location, but is there a way (local Group Policy, registry edit, or script) to have the system redirect the ?My Documents? folder for all local users to the much larger D partition? And to make the D partition the default for all new/future users. The added benefit would be that if the OS bites the big, you could reinstall it without affecting the user data.

3 replies

by darts32

There are two ways of redirecting ?My Documents? from users to a server.
1. Redirect all users to a single folder on the server.
2. Redirect the ?My Documents? folder of each user to a user-specific subdirectory of a server directory.
The second option is preferred as it segregates the data for each user.
1. To configure this, start the Active Directory Group Policy MMC snapin.
2. From the tree view on the left side choose the Policy-Name\ User Configuration\ Windows Settings\ Folder Redirection option.
3. Here you can view the ?My Documents? folder as a node.
4. Right-click and choose Properties.
5. Here you can choose the type of redirection you want?Basic means single server directory and Advanced means separate directory for each user.
6. The dialog shows how this is managed.
7. You need to specify a server path of a directory for each group of users. The redirection policy works for user groups, not individual users (doing this would be too cumbersome). For each group you have to specify a UNC path (\ \ server\ sharename). Within this directory, for each user within the group, a separate directory will be created and files will be redirected automatically.

To redirect every users My Documents folder:
1. Logon to a domain controller as a member of the Domain Admin group.
2. Start / Run / MMC / OK.
3. Console / Add/Remove Snap-in.
4. Add the Group Policy snap-in.
5. Select the Default Domain Policy.
6. User Configuration / Windows Settings / Folder Redirection.
7. Right-click My Document and press Properties.
8. Press Basic.
9. In the Target Folder Location box, type the path as \\ServerName\ShareName\%username%.
NOTE: Redirection of the users' My Document folder happens when the user logs on. The network folder is automatically created.

by ewgny

If possible, I would recommend that you use either use group policy, or a scripting solution to redirect the users My Documents folder to a network Share.
This way you have a single point of storage for backup. You can set up a partition on a Server, set disk quotas on the partition, then use Group Policy to redirect. If you don't have a 2000 or 2k3 domain, then you can script the redirection.

by onell

I know and understand the benefits of storing user folders on the network, but I have over 250 users, so storing all their data on a server, even with disk quotas, is not an option at this time. My only option is to manually move each users ?My Documents? to the D partition, which takes up a lot of my time, or come with a logon script that sets the default path to the D partition on the local machine. By the way I know very little about scripts.

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