Recently we have came across an issue where users home folders were getting deleted, every time we changed the users home folder location in there AD user object

Each user who had there home folder deleted all changed their home folder to a DFSR path, all had offline folders enable and all had a GPO applied with the setting “ Enable Move the Contents of Documents to the new location” enabled.

After much research we managed to find out the scenarios in which the users files would or wouldn’t get deleted.

Scenario 1

Folder Gets Deleted Every time we change the path.

1, Enable Move the Contents of Documents to the new location

2, Set UNC path under the home drive for the User in AD

3, Log on as the user onto Vista Client

4, Make sure H drive is enabled for Offline files

5, Add some files to the H drive and then perform a Sync through offline files

6, Change Users home drive to DFS namespace

7, Log off Vista machine and Log back on

8, Perform a Sync

9,Reboot Client

10, Home Folder gets deleted

Scenario 2

Folder doesn’t get deleted

1, Deselect Move the Contents of Documents to the new location

2, Set UNC path under the Profile for the User in AD

3, Log on as the user onto Vista Client

4, Make sure H drive is enabled for Offline files

5, Add some files to the H drive and then perform a Sync through offline files

6, Change User home drive to DFS namespace

7, Log off Vista machine and Log back on

8, Perform a Sync

9, Reboot Client

10, Home Folder does not get deleted

Scenario 3

Folder doesn’t get deleted

1, Do not use offline files

2, Move the contents folder can be enable or disabled doesn’t make a difference

In the end we went for scenario 2 as we needed users to have the offline files functionality.