Home Folders vs Individual Folders

[kmaultsby18]

Hello all, I have another question about shared folders. Is home folders the same as individual folders? Example for myself, I have a home folder, do I place my personal documents in that shared folder, or should I create a shared folder with an example, Kenny, and place my document in that location and do the same with the rest of my family members? I think I ask this question before but could not locate it.

 

[Telos]

Home folders are permissions protected from other users. Shared folders are "shared".

 

[kmaultsby18]

So my example is correct placing my documents folders in my home folder, and my wife would place her documents in her home folder?

 

[Telos]

That's basically it. Files you might share, or work on together would be in shared folders (though it is possible to share files/folders in your home folder, it must be done intentionally).

 

[fredbert]

The User Home feature is analogous to /Users/<username> in Mac and C:\Users\<username> in Windows: in DSM the shared folder /homes is used to hold /homes/<username> for local DSM user accounts, and for ease of use the user will see a pseudo-folder /home that is mapped to their specific /homes/<username>.

Some DSM packages rely on the User Home feature being enabled so that they can distinguish between a user's personal data and any shared locations: e.g. Synology Drive and Photos use the home folder, and there are other packages too.

There is nothing to stop you from creating another shared folder and adding sub-folders to it, and then you manually manage the access permissions so that the right users have access to the appropriate folders and files. You can be creative and create your own user groups and add users to these, and then assign the groups to folder etc. But you will have to manage it: I created two shared folders for this type of interworking

1. A home-shared, which is a bit like the old 'drop box' folder in Mac user home folders, which allows other accounts to read a user's shared content and also has a sub-folder that can have files dropped for that user.
2. One for archived files, which is controlled much more like /homes and allows saving content away from the daily-use stuff in /homes. It means my backup strategy can be different for this stuff.

 

[kmaultsby18]

Thank you for the examples.