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I found this (Difference between Roaming profiles, User Profile, Home Folder, and Redirected Folders?) but it doesn't really answer my question.

If I assign users a Home folder, is that essentially the same as redirecting the folders GPO gives me access to? (AppData, Desktop, Start Menu, Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, Favorites, Contacts, Downloads, Links, Searches, Saved Games)? What is the benefit to using one system over the other, or should I be using both together and why?

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A home folder is basically just a mapped drive, and the default "start in" directory when launching a command prompt.

Folder redirection places the selected folders transparently on a network share and does not map a drive. It's transparent to the user - they have no idea that they are working with a network resource when saving files to a redirected folder.

They are two very different user experiences. Home folders are generally considered a legacy technology.

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First of all when you want to implement home folders and so on, I would really recommend to look into FSLogix. that tackles a lot of problems from the past when using home folders. And the benefit is that you also can store the home folders in a storage account in Azure.

All these things you are asking are implemented in the user session. A home folder is a mapped drive which redirects some things for the user in the user profile. Folder redirection essentially does the same. For example if a user has a session and you want to place a folder on the desktop called Share and you want to redirect it a fileserver where you also have a folder share. Folder redirection will than create that folder on the users Desktop and every file thats stored in there will automatically be saved on the file server in the folder share, the user doesn't notice anything off that.

But folder redirection is a bit outdated while we have onedrive for business nowadays. Essentially Onedrive for Business does the same, it redirects the documents libraries to a personal SharePoint online space. Of course the use cloud services must be possible.

And please also migrate away form server 2012 r2, that's becoming legacy now.

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