accidental deletion as network drive, any protection?

[evaG]

Hello,

 

I regularly browse my Drivepool from another computer in the network.  I've noticed that if I accidentally delete a file it will not go to the recycle bin, it gets permanently deleted. I've tried setting the files in the pool to read-only, but it doesn't seem to take.  They get marked as read only, but if I click delete they are deleted. Is there is there any way to get around this problem?

 

Is there a way to view the network drive as read only? What would happen if I went into the pool folder in the host drive and changed the file attributes there, would this corrupt the file in some way? - and would it protect from accidental deletion? Any workarounds at all for this?

 

thx, E

[saitoh183]

I dont think this is a DP issue because This is how windows works with network deletion. The recycle bin is made for local drive content deletion. So if your on your DP from the local machine and delete something, it will go to the recycle bin. But from the network it is a permanent deletion like when you delete a file using Shift+Del or empty the recycle bin. 

 

If you want to avoid deletion, then set your network share to Read only would be the way to go as you mentioned.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Saitoh is correct. This isn't a DrivePool related issue, as this is how Windows handles ALL network shares. 

 

Well, most. The only exception are the user folders (documents, desktop, downloads, etc) which appear to have special handling when on a network share. 

 

There are utilities that try to watch for that, but nothing built in.

 

The only other option is to set the NTFS permissions so that you will only receive read, list and execute permissions. Meaning that you'd need to use a separate account for actually deleting files. Something that is a PITA. 

[evaG]

Yeah, I know it's not a Drivepool issue, I was just wondering if anyone had found any workarounds; to see what my options were.

[evaG]

Saitoh is correct. This isn't a DrivePool related issue, as this is how Windows handles ALL network shares. 

 

Well, most. The only exception are the user folders (documents, desktop, downloads, etc) which appear to have special handling when on a network share. 

 

There are utilities that try to watch for that, but nothing built in.

 

The only other option is to set the NTFS permissions so that you will only receive read, list and execute permissions. Meaning that you'd need to use a separate account for actually deleting files. Something that is a PITA. 

 

I'm in the process of setting that up now.  I accidentally deleted a file from a pool; luckily I had a local backup. I think that if I: 1)set up a new account on both pcs, 2) give the new account read only permission, 3) then open explorer.exe in the other PC as that new user then, I will be able to basically browse in explorer normally without worrying about accidental deletion. I'll post later on and let you know if that worked.  Maybe I shouldn't be doing all my work in my admin account, but I am:P

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yeah, I know it's not a Drivepool issue, I was just wondering if anyone had found any workarounds; to see what my options were.

 

There are three ways to handle this: 

• Restrictive permissions on the drive/share that prevent deletion.  Less than ideal, beacuse it makes maintenance a pain. 
• Previous Versions (VSS) support (restore from previous version).  Non-trivial to add to StableBit DrivePool. Seriously. There is literally NO documentation on how to implement this, so it would be reverse engineering a complex chunk of code and hopefully emulating it properly. 

  Additionally, these can be purged normally.  There are a number of circumstances that Windows can/will purge the VSS snapshots anyways.  Additionally, it would take up a large chunk of space on the disks, as well.

• Some sort of file system filter that would intercept these commands and handle them different. Either by preventing the delete/modify, or by moving the file instead of deleting it. 

  Again, not ideal, because if you want to delete files, it's going to be an additional step or three to do so.

 

 

Maybe I shouldn't be doing all my work in my admin account, but I am:P

 

Yeah, really shouldn't be using an Admin account for ... well, anything but admin tasks   < _ <

It's really bad practice >_>

And Microsoft highly recommends against it   < _ <.

 

And I should stop doing so, as well.  >_>

[evaG]

Here's what I ended up doing:

 

1) Created new Admin account on both PCs

2) In PC with Drivepool, I took ownership of files on new account

3) then shared with old account as read only

4) left one folder as read/read in pool to transfer files to it from network

5) setup VNC for when I needed to modify read only folders remotely

 

Not very elegant but it works.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, that definitely works.  And isn't too dissimilar to what I do.