My company uses folder redirection to store the AppData folder on a network share.
I will be moving the AppData to a new share and I was wondering about the automatic data transfering feature of the GPO. Is it reliable ?
What if the copying process is interrupted ? Is it reliable (like robocopy or rsync) ?
Or should I copy the data myself ?
All my desktop clients run Windows 7 and the AD infrastructure Windows 2008 R2.
Best regards,
The Folder Redirection native 'move contents' method is reliable in that it won't lose any data, but if interrupted, it won't 'pick up where it left off' at the next logon. You would have to manually move the files that did not get moved.
The big disadvantage to using the native method is that it can be very, very slow, especially when you have large files (surprisingly, lots of small files move relatively quickly). I've never figured out why, but it's almost like there's some kind of cap on how much data it tries to move per minute. Additionally, the file move is carried out by the client, so you're going to be moving traffic over the network, which introduces some inherent delay - the process will only move as fast as the slowest link between client and server.
The primary advantage to using the native method is that it gets the permissions right every time. You never have to worry about ownership changing or the folders inheriting new permissions from the new parent folder or anything else weird. The amount of trouble this can save you should not be underestimated.
The answer to your question really depends on how much data you have to move. If you have AppData folders over 1GB each, I'd strongly encourage you to move them by hand - robocopy is a great solution, just make absolutely sure the permissions are identical after you move the files. Otherwise, the native method should work just fine. Finally, as with any major process, make sure your run a backup beforehand.
