MCTS 70-680: Offline files

This video looks at offline files in Windows 7. Offline files allow a local copy of a network share to be kept on the local computer. This local copy can be synced with the network copy. This includes file changes and deletions.

Offline file demo 02:14

Offline files modes
Offline files work in one of four different modes. There is 1 online mode and 3 offline modes. If Windows starts using the local copy of the offline files, it will switch to one of the offline modes. Windows will either automatically or through user control switch back to online mode when required.

Online Mode
When in online mode, all file changes are sent to the server and also are updated on the local copy.

Auto Offline mode
When the connection is lost or becomes too unreliable, Windows will automatically switch to auto offline mode. In this mode Windows will use the local copy of the files. Windows will check every 2 minutes to see if the network share is available. Once the network share is available, Windows will automatically switch to online mode and start using the network share again.

Manual Offline Mode
This mode is user selected. This will force Windows to use the local copy of the network share even when the network share is available. Windows will continue to use the offline copy until the user switches the offline files back to online mode.

Slow Link Mode
Windows will change to this mode when the network speed degrades, that is, it becomes too slow. Once in slow link mode, the local cache will be used. Every five minutes the network is tested to see if the speed has improved. If so, offline files will switch back to online mode. This setting can be configured so that high speed LAN networks always use the online copy but when using a lower speed connection, even when using high speed internet at home, the local version will be used. This can make the user experience with offline files a little easier since the offline copy will automatically be used at home and the server copy will be used only when the user is directly connected to the network.

How to use offline files
If you want to make a file, folder or a complete share available offline, right click the item and select always available offline. Windows explorer will use different icons to indicate which files are available offline.

Sync Center
The Sync Center in Windows controls the updating of the local and network copy of offline files when changes are made. It can also sync USB devices like MP3 players. Syncs can be set up to be performed at certain times or when a certain event occurs. Events include the user logging on and off, someone locking the work station, and the computer becoming idle. The sync center will also find conflicts between the local version and the network version. These conflicts occur when both files are modified and Windows cannot tell which version it should use. When this occurs you can choose which version to keep or to keep both versions.

Group Policy
The settings for group policy can be found under Computer configuration-Administrative templates-Network-Offline Files
There are a lot of settings in here. Listed below are some of the more commonly used ones:
Exclude File from being cached\This prevents files of certain types from being created when in any of the offline modes.
Files not cached\File types specified in this group policy will not be made available offline. Usually database files are not available offline because, by their very nature, they are used by many people. Offline files are not able to replicate small changes made by many users and must replicate the complete file. By default, file types of the following extensions are not made available offline: .slm .mdb .ldb .mdw .mde .pst .db?
Configure slow link mode\This allows you to configure when slow link mode is used and for which servers or share you want to use slow link mode. This group policy's settings also accepts parameters like latency=50 and throughput=10000.
Configure slow link speed\This group policy setting allows you to set the value at which slow link mode will be used.

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• Offline Files
• 70-680
• MCITP
• MCTS
• Windows 7
• ITFreeTraining

[itfreetraining]

@sharanash1983 Thanks for watching the video and leaving a comment.

[sharanash1983]

Thanks