Question : Roaming Profile Alternatives

We are using roaming profiles to store user settings in the event of a computer crash.  This keeps us from having to try to restore all the user settings on a PC - almost an impossible task.  However, we do experience the slowdowns associated with roaming profiles.

Is there an alternate way to preserve user setting without having to use roaming profiles?

I notice that some use folder redirection in conjunction with roaming profiles.  Is this a good solution?

Answer : Roaming Profile Alternatives

One of the gotchas with roaming profiles is users putting big crap in their profile directories, like high-res wallpaper.  Another is keeping the temporary files that are stored in the profile to a minimum.

Ideally, what you need is the important stuff that's stored in the profile, not all the crap that lands there.  Problem is, even, if not especially, Microsoft tends to dump everything but the kitchen sink into a user's profile.

Part of the process of preventing the crap from getting into the stored roaming profile is redirection of My Documents out of the profile directory structure.  This is a very good idea if you have your users use the "my documents" folder by default.  A lot of admins have trained their users to save all documents to a network mapped drive, but with a GPO you can redirect My Documents to a network drive, like their home directory for example.

Another gotcha is that Outlook files including PST used for archive and the OST for offline cached-mode, all land in the user profile directory structure - and Microsoft doesn't want you redirecting PSTs to a network drive.   Keeping that stuff backed up is a story for another day ;)

You can, through group policy again, specify folders that you do not want stored in the roaming profile directory.  Unfortunately, I don't think the .adm file with the roaming profile gpo has the reverse option - choosing which folders you DO want stored in the roaming profile.

One thing you could do is see if you can write a .wsh script file to run the msoffice save my settings wizard in the background on a regular basis.  That won't save all their settings but it would save some of them anyway.  

I wonder if the user personality migration tool could be leveraged in sort of a batch mode to create a "profile backup" instead of using roaming profiles?