Network shares not available till sync complete

[iainm2]

Hi, I have about 80 users on laptops, all on Windows XP SP3. Everything works fine, Folder Redirection, Offline Files etc. We have added a new complication to our way of working which I would appeciate some help with.
The users sync My Documents which is redirected to a network share. At log on and off this syncronises with the users offline cache. Works fine.
The users also have three network shares mapped. Untill synchronisation takes place the contents of the shares are not visible. This has not been a problem untill we installed a Sonic Firewall so that we can access the network using VPN. As the users My Documents can be quite large (!) sync can take a long time to happen or fail. The user is unable to get files from the network share until sync completes and this is causing them problems for some. Is there a way making network shares visible regardles of whether sync takes place?
Hope the above makes sense.

Thanks Iain

[roly_dee]

Hi Iain

I don't think there is an easy solution to this (we have the same issue). The problem is that the Offline Files feature makes each server online/offline, not each share.

I think the best solution would be to move the Redirected Folders to a dedicated server; not practical for us since we've got ~200 users now with Gbs of data :-/

I wish MS had mentioned that on any of their White Papers...
If you want to research it further Offline Files is also known as Client-Side Caching (CSC) in some documentation.

Hope this helps.