Sharing/dividing a hard drive

[HortonsWho]

Hey you WinDoze users...

I'm brainstorming a project at work and am wondering:

Can a networked hardrive (under Win2K) be partitioned so that individual users get a percentage of the disc space?

In otherwords-- say you have a 200 gig drive and have five users. Is it possible, via log-in/password that the users could each have there unique 40 gig each?

[Viper]

I believe you can do that.....but I am not sure.....the one who I think would know would be F7....I think he is a network administrator....

[Phanataz]

You can actually partition it, like with FDISK or Partition Magic, and then just map each of those partitions (that will appear as 5 drives on the networked machine)

You can also just share out 5 folders on the drive, and have each user computer map to their own folder.

The dos command (Under win98 anyway) you would use on the USER computer to map a drive on the NETWORKED computer is:

net use f: \\HortonsServer\cdrive MYPASSWORD

---
the F: is the name of the drive that will appear on the USER Computer after it is mapped.

\\HortonsServer\cdrive is the name of the NETWORKED computer, and the drive/folders that are shared.

MYPASSWORD is the name of the password for the shared drive/folder on the NETWORKED computer.


My 2 cents.

[Play]

I think with Win2K server, you should be able to restrict size limit for each user via Quotas.

1. Create home shares fore each user in the 200G drive, let's say D: drive, then restrict each user folder's security accordingly.
2. Assign the home share to each account via User Manager or Active Directory Users and Computers or Computer Manager, depending on whether or not you're on a NT4.0 domain, Win2k ADS, or stand-alone network.
3. Go into the D: drive/partition properties (right-click on D: drive, then select properties), under the Quota tab, enable Quota.
4. Select the Limit and warning options accordingly.
5. To limit the different quota limits for each user, under the same quota tab, click on the Quota Entries button to bring up Quota Entries manager.

I may have missed a step or two, but the previous steps should accomplish what you're looking for.

HTH,
Play

[Phanataz]

yeah i was going to type that next..

[HortonsWho]

Thanks for the help, folks--- gonna save some money and time following your advice!

Hort

[Play]

Originally posted by Blackheart
Or you can install Win2000 on each partition. Thats one way you can do it

I may be wrong here, but I think he wants to have any of the users able to access their resources simultaneously. Not quite sure how installing Win2k on each partition would accomplish this since you can only have one OS running at a time on a single PC. No disrespect, just curious where you're heading with it...

[_F7_]

Yea your best bet is to just keep it one big partition.

Specify the users account to create their home directory on that networked drive. Then within their user account properties, or on the drive properties, you can set a cap on the amount of space each user is allotted on that drive. Then just create a login script that maps a drive and you're all set.

[HortonsWho]

Well-- I'd like everybody to be able to have a defined amount of space, password protected, on one big, networked drive. They'd each access from their own desktop PC.

[Phanataz]

what OS do the desktop PC's have?

[HortonsWho]

Everything is Win2k on an NT network.