Photo Credits:Syntopia

Initial structure of the new folder organization is very important. The reason you are thinking about rearranging your shared folders is likely because they are chaotic, the data is mixed up or saved to wrong places. You probably do not want to have the same problem in the new shared folder structure. There is no single right base structure. Construct the base folder structure in such way that your users feel comfortable using it, keeping in mind that not every user will be satisfied with the structure you select. The more users take part in the decision process the harder it is. Get together a small group of key users and decide on folders that will form the base for the new structure. Keep in mind that the new structure should make it easier to find the data, so be careful to not make the structure too complicated.

Pay the same amount of attention to rules for naming folders. When users start creating their folders they need simple and easy-to-use rules in place for folder naming. This is especially important in multilingual organizations. Sometimes it is very difficult to understand somebody that speaks your language, but with a foreign accent. Imagine that you are an administrator and a user asks you to change permissions on a folder. It is very important that you understand correctly what he wants. It is even more difficult when a user asks you to change permissions on a folder that is in foreign language. The folder name might even use characters you don’t have on your keyboard! In global organizations it might be easier if you have defined one language as the official corporate language. In that case, you can require that all folders that should have defined permissions must be written in that language. For folders deeper in the structure that inherit security settings from their parents you can allow users more freedom.

When Promigra Server Migrator prepares scripts for folder rearrangement it also creates scripts for building Active Directory security groups. It builds security group names from actual folder names. As you can use characters in folder names that are not allowed in Active Directory it has to replace those characters with underscores. The administrator’s life will be much easier if you try to have AD security group names and folder names as close as possible. Keep that in mind when you prepare folder naming standards.

However you decide your standards to be, keep them as simple as possible.

One of the promised features of RichCopy is its ability to schedule file copy jobs. It would be nice if you could synchronize your folders or migrate a file server overnight when nobody is using the files. Unfortunately, it looks like the version 4.0.217 of RichCopy has a bug that prevents it from delivering the promised functionality. When I tried to create a schedule for one of my jobs the job was run immediately or not at all. Even if the schedule functionality in RichCopy worked, it would only allow you to run the task once at specified time.

RichCopy and Windows Scheduled Tasks

Fortunately, it is very easy to use RichCopy from the command line. If you combine command line execution with Windows Scheduled Tasks you have a winning combination and you will have plenty of options to run your RichCopy jobs. You can schedule it to run daily, weekly, monthly, only on specific days in a week, when you log-on, etc.
To schedule a RichCopy job go to Start/Control Panel/Scheduled Tasks and start the Add Scheduled Task wizard.

• When asked to select the program you want to run, scroll down to RichCopy or click the Browse button and find it on disk.
• Select the desired schedule.
• Before you finish the Wizard select the check box for "Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish." The job properties window will appear.
• Go to edit box Run and append command line parameters at the end of the line.

RichCopy is a free and powerful tool for copying files and folders. It has a nice GUI and can also be run from the command line. The command line option is very useful for scripts and batch operations.

All of the power and good stuff about RichCopy breeds a whole lot of complexity. The command line option has many possible parameters. The parameters are listed in the help file, but only with a short description, which makes it hard to manually construct the copy command.

GUI to the rescue

RichCopy’s GUI has a very nice, but hidden feature for building command line parameters. Following the steps below you can set all the options in the GUI and then generate the command line parameters.

1. Switch to Advanced View
   Open menu option View and select Advanced.
   
2. Select source and destination folders
3. Select appropriate options in the File copy options dialog
4. Select Others in the tree view
   
5. Copy command line parameters
   

Alternatively, you can build migration scripts with Promigra Server Migrator. Promigra Server Migrator builds scripts that utilize industry standard tools like RoboCopy, RichCopy, icacls, PowerShell and others.

 
Robocopy or “Robust File Copy” is a powerful tool used by many Windows system administrators to copy files and folders. It was originally available as part of the Windows Resource Kit and is now a standard feature of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

The powerful tool finally has an even better alternative – RichCopy. This is a free tool made by Ken Tamaru of Microsoft. RichCopy has been used internally at Microsoft for years and now they have released it to the public as a free alternative to Robocopy.

Performance improvements

The best feature of RichCopy is its fast performance, thanks to its ability to use multiple threads. It can be significantly faster than XCopy and even Robocopy. Rather than copying the files serially, RichCopy can copy several files in parallel. A user can specify how many threads to use for directory search, how many files to copy in parallel and how many threads to use for each file. With the right settings the time needed for a file copy operation becomes minimal.

Support for low bandwidth and high latency networks

RichCopy was designed to support low bandwidth and high latency networks through its built-in powerful error handling mechanisms. A user can specify how many times the program should retry to copy a file and how long should it wait between tries. Users can also select which errors should immediately cancel the copy process. For example, it might make sense to retry to copy a file from a temporary unavailable location, but there is no point to retry if access to the file has been denied.

Built-in timer

The best time to copy files is usually when users don’t need them. With most other tools that means you have to stay late and copy the files when everybody else has left the company.
RichCopy has a built in timer that lets you define the copy operation during the day and then schedule it to run overnight automatically.

Pausing, resuming and retrying a copy operation

The copy operation can be paused and retried in RichCopy. This feature comes in handy when copying files over unreliable network connections. In case of problems the process can be paused and then resumed when the problem has been fixed.

Various copy methods

RichCopy allows for a variety of different methods to copy files. With the Purge method you can mirror source to destination folders. When files or folders get deleted on the source, RichCopy will also remove them from the destination.
When the Move method is used the files at the source location will be deleted after they are successfully copied to the destination.
Another available method is to consolidate different sources.

Filtering

RichCopy offers powerful mechanisms to filter files and folders that should be included or excluded from the copy operation. Users can specify various conditions for file names, attributes and creation dates, and can set conditions to copy only files changed or accessed within a certain timeframe.

Graphical user interface

Unlike Robocopy, RichCopy has a nice GUI. The organized GUI makes configuring the copy operation a simple task. All the options available in GUI can also be used from command line. The command line parameters are listed in the help file.

Log settings

Operations can be logged to a text file and analyzed afterwards. There are many options that let users define how detailed information in the log should be.

RichCopy can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

Photo Credits:Gaetan Lee

Brian has just finished a monthly report. Before he sends it to his boss, he asks a coworker, James, to review it:

B: “James, would you please take a look at my monthly report?”

J: “Sure. Where is it?”

B: “It’s in the Drafts folder on the G drive.”

J: “Are you sure it is on drive G? I don’t see the folder named Drafts. There are only budget related folders.”

The company Brian and James work for uses many file servers. Each of them publishes many pools with folders and files. To access the folders and files more easily, users map them with different drive letters.

Brian and James both used letter G to map a network drive, but they used it to map two different network drives. No wonder they each see a different picture when they open their own drive G!

Have you ever been in the situation like that? Some users who work on many projects make use of almost all letters in the alphabet! Can you imagine how difficult it is to collaborate in an environment like that?

A time comes when you have to start with folder reorganization on your file servers. This is also the right time to standardize how network drives get mapped. When all users use the same drive letter to access a shared drive it is much easier to refer others to a specific file.

Which Letters to use for Standard Network Drives

This largely depends on the level you managed to simplify your shared folders. In general it is better to use a letter you can associate to the purpose of the drive.

Most organizations offer users a private space on a file server, known as “home folder”. You can automatically map each user’s home folder as drive H (for home). Some organizations prefer letter P (for personal).

If you managed to consolidate all your shared folders to one folder pool, you can map it with letter G (for group) or S (for shared). Some companies use letter W (for work-group).

Organizations that utilize corporate identity formats can prepare a special folder share with templates and map it as drive T (for templates). It can contain standard templates for memos, fax, orders, presentations, etc. for company-wide use.

If you haven’t used the letter S to map a shared group drive, you can use it to map a drive with useful programs (S for software). You can also use letter U (U for utilities).

Standardize Drive Letter for CD and DVD Drives

It might be useful to standardize a drive letter for CD or DVD drives. All computers could be set up to have a CD or DVD drive available under letter X. This could simplify life for authors of installation scripts. It is also convenient for users because a DVD drive will be under the same letter on all computers, independently of the number of local hard drives and partitions.