Migrated a client to a new domain for reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog post. After the migration and proper setup of Folder Redirection to the file server, several clients were reporting that their files were not the latest version. Researched the issue and found that their was no trace of the latest versions of these files on the workstation or server via Windows Search, but did find shortcuts that pointed to a server that has not been in production for over a year. Powering on that server found none of the latest files and there was nothing at the old IP of that server that was housing them currently. Then it hits me on the way to church – Offline Files on the workstation. It turns out that during the era of the previous domain controller the Folder Redirection was not done properly and when there was a migration to a new File Server these few clients had kept a pointer to the old file server with Offline Files. All file changes and new files were stored in the local Offline Files cache up to the size limit of that cache. I had to do the following to gain access to the cache to copy all data to the newer file server:

Recovering Offline Files Cache Due to Bad Folder Redirection Link

1. Go through a long process of changing folder ownership one sub-folder at a time to drill down to the user’s data in a path similar to the one below. There will be several subdirectories to look through before finding the files needed. Please refer to this Microsoft TechNet Article for details on how.
   

   %windir%\CSC\

2. Once access is gained into the folder, copied the contents to an alternate location.
3. Opened a Command Prompt and drilled down into that new folder.
4. Typed in the following command:
   

   *.* /T /G username@domain.local:F

   then confirming the change to apply Full Permissions to all files and folders that were copied there.

5. Copied the newly changed files into the appropriate place on the new file server and verified with user that their files were there as expected.

This won’t save everything but is the last option for this particular peculiar issue on the clients server.
If your company is using Folder Redirection or Offline files, then contact us for assistance.