Understanding Folder Redirection in Earlier Versions of Windows

Because of the limitations of roaming profiles, a second corporate roaming technology called Folder Redirection was first introduced in Windows 2000 and was basically unchanged in Windows XP. Folder Redirection works by providing the ability to change the target location of special folders within a user's profile from a default location within the user's local profile to a different location either on the local computer or on a network share. For example, an administrator can use Group Policy to change the target location of a user's My Documents folder from the user's local profile to a network share on a file server. Folder Redirection thus allows users to work with data files on a network server as if the files were stored locally on their computers.

Folder Redirection provides several advantages as a corporate roaming technology:

• You can implement Folder Redirection with RUP to reduce the size of roaming user profiles. This means that not all the data in a user's profile needs to be transferred every time the user logs on or off of the network-a portion of the user's data and settings is transferred instead using Folder Redirection. This can considerably speed up logon and logoff times for users compared with using RUP alone.
• You can also implement Folder Redirection without RUP to provide users with access to their data regardless of which computer they use to log on to the network. Folder Redirection thus provides full corporate roaming capabilities for any folders that are redirected. On Windows XP, these include the My Documents (which can optionally include My Pictures), Application Data, Desktop, and Start Menu folders within a user's profile.

Folder Redirection as implemented on earlier versions of Windows has some drawbacks, however:

• Folder Redirection is hard-coded to redirect only a limited number of user profile folders. Some key folders, such as Favorites and Cookies, are not redirected, which limits the usefulness of this technology for corporate roaming purposes unless combined with RUP.
• Folder Redirection by itself does not roam an application's registry settings, limiting its usefulness as a corporate roaming technology. For an optimum roaming experience, implement Folder Redirection with RUP.

Note RUP is the only way of roaming user settings (the HKCU registry hive); Folder Redirection is the primary way of roaming user data.