Can you share offline files cache with two user accounts?
- by Joel Coehoorn
I have a new laptop that I use for both home and work. It runs windows 7 ultimate, and is joined to the domain at work. It is okay to use this laptop for both work and personal activities, and I even have an account set up on the local machine in addition to the work domain account specifically for this to help keep the two separate.
At home, I have a file server that I use to share files and printers with my wife's laptop, this new laptop, and my old desktop which will now become the family machine. My mp3 library is on there, among other things.
What I want to do is use the windows Offline Files feature to keep a synced copy of my music library on the laptop. That part is easy. What's tricky is that I want to share this offline cache between both the local account on the laptop and my work domain account. I could do them both separately, but then I have two copies of a very large music library stored locally. This also means twice the sync burden, when the domain account is rarely connected to the file share. I really want to be able to sync from the local machine account only, and have the domain account be able to use the synced files.
I know where the offline file cache is kept (\Windows\CSC) and I can find the cached files (not encrypted), but permissions on the cache are setup weird, and so using that cache directly is not trivial.
Any ideas appreciated.