Roaming profiles vs. Home Folders vs. Local

JohnnyBiggles

For a long period of time, our users were using WinXP. There were a number of issues when using roaming profiles which included corrupted profiles and PST files that became difficult to use or corrupted themselves. So we decided to get rid of roaming profiles once we rolled out Win7. While we were using roaming profiles, we were also using network Homefolders configured in each users Active Directory profile. We kept those... but now the new issue is, people have a habit of creating an saving files to their desktops, which I believe is putting them at risk of losing that data. I find it hard to trust educating them on where to create/save files and would rather not interrupt their behavior anyway. What would be a good way to avoid roaming profiles while keeping the homefolders and providing some way of maintaining/retaining this level data, even for a select group of users?

ptilsen

If the user data is truly valuable and getting it properly placed is truly going to be difficult, workstation backups are the obvious and only answer, in my opinion. You can fight this battle six different ways, but when it comes down to it either the users need to put important stuff in the correct place or you need workstation backups. Workstation backups are not necessarily expensive or difficult to implement, depending on your environment. Generally speaking, if roaming profiles were at one point viable, workstation backups are probably viable.

There can be added benefits to good backup plan. Obviously data assurance in and of itself is your main priority, but when it comes to workstation break/fix procedures, being able to reimage a workstation with a backup of itself can be a huge time-and-user-productivity-saver. If you're not in a tightly-controlled, largely homogenized environment, this is a great way to go.