Setting up a File System Crawling Account
By default, the File connector crawls the file share with the CES service identity (see About the CES Service Logon Account). You can also select or create a file share account with appropriate permissions to be used by the connector to crawl the file share. This is typically done in Active Directory by creating an account that has full read permissions throughout the file shares to index. A best practice is to create a dedicated account for this purpose with a strong password that never changes.
In CES, you will assign this account to a user identity (see Adding a User Identity), and you will assign the user identity to a source (see Configuring and Indexing a File Connector Source).
Important: When indexing PST mail archive files, the crawling account must also have write and modify permissions. When the mail archive files are stored in a given folder, you can set up the account so it only has write access to that folder; however, when the mail archive files are scattered through different locations, give the account write access to the entire repository being indexed.
When you want or need to use different accounts for various files shares or file shares sections, consider creating two or more sources and assign a different user identity to each source.
Example: You can index the complete content of a file share except mail archive files with one source using an account with full read permissions and use a second source pointing to the folders containing PST files and use an account with read and write permissions to index only the content of PST files.
What's Next?
When you plan to index PST mail archive files, you need to perform specific configuration (see Mail Archive Indexing with the File Connector).
Otherwise, in CES, configure the user identity for the file connector source (see Adding a User Identity).