Some IT shops don’t even bother with client backups. I’ve had one IT Admin tell me that he sets a policy for all users to save their data on the network. If they neglect to do that, it’s not his fault. This CYA approach only makes sense if you are almost deliberately blind to the underlying business goals. How many hours of labor does client data represent? Are we to leave the security of this asset to user discretion? I think not.

So what do we do? Well, for some clients, the best way is to use offline folders:

  1. Create a GPO that redirects the my documents and desktop to folders on the server
  2. open GPMC.msc (GPMC download from Microsoft)
  3. Select the GPO that you want to use | right-click | Edit
  4. User Configuration | Windows Settings | Folder Redirection | right-click Desktop | Properties
  5. Under Setting select “Basic – Redirect everyone’s folder to the same location”
  6. Under “Target Folder…” select “Create a folder for each user…” ( we already had folders for each user, but that didn’t matter.)
  7. Under “Root Path” put the path to your users share (i.e. “serverusers”
  8. Repeat for “My Documents”

Now their “My Documents” and “Desktop” special folders are pointing to a location on the server (which is being backed up to tape or mozy or whatever) and have been automatically made available offline

Some things to note:

  1. The first time this GPO is applied to a new user, XP appears to hang with a blank screen right after login. This is normal, though annoying. Windows is just copying the user data up to the server, then making a local cache by copying it back down (I’m guessing.) You can check progress by checking the size of the user’s home directory periodically. Watch your disk space, depending on your settings, you might end up with two copies of the user data: the old data in c:documents and settings and one cached copy in c:windowscsc
  2. VPN – this is a nightmare. The user will always be offline when they login at home (unless you use this connection for login?) I’ve gotten many calls about users not being able to see all of the files on the server when VPN’d in. Basically they are still working offline and can only see the files that are available offline. Running a manual synchronize usually fixes this and most other offline folders problems (My Computer | tools | synchronize | synchronize)
  3. I’ve seen some printers stop working when a user goes offline due to a network glitch- a manual synch fixes this too
  4. Offline folders are usually cached locally in c:windowsCSC, but you can change this location using cachemov.exe from the w2k resource kit. Vista users can have fun with this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942960
  5. Sometimes your server’s autodisconnect feature wreaks havoc on offline folders, you can try this: net config server /autodisconnect:-1 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138365)
  6. Offline folders over slow VPN connections can be a pain, so you MIGHT try the old “Go Offline on Slow Link” trick. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811525# see the Overview section) Of course I ran into a wonderful scenario where not all needed files are available offline when a user was at a poorly connect site. So I was stuck, if we set them to go offline, they could only see their own my document and desktop folders on the server. If we put them online, the performance was terrible trying access their own desktop. I basically had to remove offline folders for these users.
  7. You can’t make PST files or MDB files available offline, but it still give errors on these types of files unless you MANUALLY right click each one and UNselect “make available offline” – Why is this? I do not know. It shouldn’t ever try to make them available offline in the first place. Oh well.

So we look at all of these problems and now you can see why I sometimes just say “The heck with it” and run a nice little robocopy.exe script: (available in the w2k3 resource kit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9D467A69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en)

Robocopy is like the copy command but it only moves files that are changed (newer) BY DEFAULT. There is no switch to make it do that. Just put a batch file into the “startup folder” and you are good to go. If a user cancels that weird DOS window – no sweat. It will just pick up where it left off next login. I usually do something like this:

robocopy /e /zb “c:documents and settingsuserMy Documents” “serverusersuserMy Documents”
robocopy /e /zb “c:documents and settingsuserDesktop” “serverusersuserDesktop”

Robocopy even has a /IPG:n :: Inter-Packet Gap (ms), to free bandwidth on slow lines. (nice)

I like free things that work. Why did I try to use offline folders again? (Of course offline folders works better when you might need conflict resolution like a file is modified in BOTH locations. But a basic backup scenario doesn’t result in this usually.).