Chapter 8. Filesystem administration
Filesystem administration is probably one of the most neglected aspects of our jobs. You create a disk volume and then set up some folders and shares. The area is turned over to the users, and they proceed to fill it up with their files.
You’ll have areas on specific servers for SQL Server databases or Exchange mail stores, but much of your storage space is still taken up by files of one sort or another. These files are often referred to as unstructured data and can include Microsoft Word documents, spreadsheets, pictures, and output produced by the many applications in your organization.
Files are the basic building blocks of your filesystem. As an administrator, you need to understand what files are stored and how you can find them. Files can be hidden, compressed, and possibly encrypted (but not all three at once). Being able to easily discover which files have gone through this process increases your ability to administer the system.
PowerShell and WMI provide tools to perform these management tasks, as you’ll see in the first section of this chapter. In addition to discovering information about your files, you’ll see how to use WMI to perform actions on the files. You’ll create techniques to compress, encrypt, and hide files. You’ll also learn techniques to copy files and remove unwanted files.