Description

Often we need to create file shares, and this is generally fairly boring. PowerShell can help streamline this process. This function will create the share, but does not set sharing permissions. We’ll cover that later.

This is based partly on How to Use PowerShell to create shared folders in Windows 7. I resolved some minor issues and added the pipeline parameters and some minor error checking, and the description. The script will create the folder if it doesn’t exist, and then share it.

function New-Share {
 param (
  [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true, Mandatory=$true, HelpMessage="No folder name specified")]
  [string]$FolderName,
    [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true, Mandatory=$true, HelpMessage="No share name specified")]
    [string]$ShareName,
    [parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true, Mandatory=$false, HelpMessage="No description specified")]
    [string]$Description
 )
 $error.clear()
 # Check for folder; Create it if it doesn't exist
 If (!(Test-Path $FolderName)) {
  New-Item $FolderName -type Directory | Out-Null
 }
 # Check for share; Create it if it doesn't exist
 $Shares=[WMICLASS]"WIN32_Share"
 if (!(Get-WMIObject Win32_share -filter "name='$ShareName'")){
  $Shares.Create($FolderName,$ShareName,0,65535,$Description) | Out-Null
  if (!($error)){
   # the share was created
   return $true
  } else {
   # there was an error
   return $false
  }
 } else {
  # the share already exists
  return $false
  }
} # end function New-Share

And we can then call the function with something like:

New-Share -FolderName "c:\LyncShare" -ShareName "LyncShare" -Description "Used by Lync server to store Address Book files, phone updates, and other important files."

As you can see, it’s pretty straight forward. We’ll cover setting both NTFS and Share permissions soon.

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