Hello, We are currently using offline files and folder redirection in our environment of a single office with about 100 users. Today, I found by chance that one of our users files had not been syncing to the server for what appeared to be three weeks. All the data was stored locally on his laptop and there were no obvious signs that syncing was not running. My concern is that by using offline file and folder redirection it's possible that data loss can occur if a situation like this occurs (laptop hard drive failure etc). Not something the user would have noticed and it was only by chance I happened to discover this was happening. I've read through some of the offline file and folder redirection deployment guides and it seems like the two are usually run together with offline files turned on by default. I'm wondering if I should just not use offline files and have everyone work from a share or redirected folder if possible. I'd like to find out what options I have here to prevent this type of situation from happening again. Thank You

Hi, Firstly, data loss may occur if not sync completely before local drive failure. In addition, we can disable offline files feature. However, if we do this, users cannot access their redirected folders when they losing network connection or work offline. More information: Offline Files and Folder Redirection What's New in Folder Redirection and User Profiles Best Practices for Folder Redirection in User Data and Settings Management Recommendations for Folder Redirection Hope this helps. Jeremy Wu TechNet Community Support

Thanks for the reply. I'd almost want to disable offline files to prevent an issue like this from happening. Its scary to think there might be other users on the network who are having sync issues without knowing it ad have weeks worth of data sitting on their workstations that isn't synced or backed up. With only folder redirection enabled the only times they lose access is when they are not connected on the network. If I go with just using folder redirection how would this affect users who connect in remotely via VPN? Would they still see their profile information and have their documents redirected? 90% of our uses have desktops and everyone uses the same machine every day so I don't really see the need to use offline files given the potential risk of data loss.

Hi, Thanks for the reply. As far as I know, users connect over VPN can act the same as over local network. You may not need to worry about this. More information: Folder Redirection Overview Hope this helps. Jeremy Wu TechNet Community Support