Can I upload files to one Windows share and expose them on another?

Question

So I've got a Windows server with a couple of fileshares, call them ShareA and ShareB. ShareA is read/write accessible to only a couple of admins, and ShareB is read-only for all. The files on the server live side by side at D:\ShareA and D:\ShareB.

There's a folder on ShareA that I would like to expose to ShareB, so that the admins can change the contents of that folder from wherever they have ShareA mounted, and those contents will be automatically made accessible to the users of ShareB.

Is this possible? I've tried symlinks so far without success -- they don't appear to be abstracted by the file server as would be needed.

---

I am specifically trying to avoid altering share permissions here, like giving the admins write access to ShareB, or (vice-versa) everyone else read-only for the directory in ShareA. This question is specifically about how to avoid doing that in the most elegant way possible.

Answer 1

I think know what you are trying to do. I do this and don't have any problems.

Windows supports two types of 'symlinks' - known as junctions.

One is a local link where you have d:\shareA\myDirlink - shared as \\srv\sharea the other isd:\shareB\Mydir - shared as \\srv\shareb

you can create mydirlink as a junction (like a unix hardlink) to d:\shareb\mydir Or you can create it as a link to \\shareb\mydir

you will want the former. The junction.exe from sysinternals.com (i.e MS) or the mklink.exe programs will both serve well.

All you do is create a junction in d:\sharea pointing at d:\shareb\mydir. You will need to set read access (NTFS permissions) to the directory and its subcontents for your \\srv\sharea users, but once set theres no more to it.

Another alternative is to simply share d:\shareb\mydir as \\srv\mydir-rw

and grant access to it to the admin group you mentioned.