You could simply enable "Roaming User Profiles". Here's the Microsoft Technet article on
"Configuring Roaming User Profiles"However, given the warning on the SME "workgroup" tab (
"You should leave this set to the default of No unless you have experience...", and the further details added on the MSDN blog "oldnewthing" entry
"Beware of Roaming User Profiles" I'd avoid using them unless your users a) don't really roam, and b) all have identically configured workstations (same hardware drivers, same OS version, same applications)
I usually create an unsatisfactory combination of moving "My Documents" to a network share (as you have done) and some other backup system to copy the users' important data and settings to the server. I then schedule the workstation backup individually on each workstation using the Task Scheduler.
Backup systems I've used include:
Insync from Dillobits Software, xcopy and ntbackup (both included w/ Windows). Microsoft has a program called
Robocopy that is part of the
Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools that is designed to synchronize data between two directories, can be installed on Windows XP, and can be extensively scripted. This tool, with the proper script, could be used to maintain backups of your worktation data on the server, which could then be backed up...
It looks as though you could use "gpedit.msc" - the "Group Policy" plugin for the Microsoft Management Console - to create logon/logoff scripts for your users or startup/shutdown scripts for your workstations that execute some sort of data backup or synchronization. I'm not sure if this works on Windows XP, or if this file is included w/ XP or if I got it elsewhere...
I have seen an elaborate "logoff" script used for this purpose in conjunction with
xxcopy and some scripting that tracks how long it has been since the last "backup", allowing optional backups at each logoff but forcing a backup at least once every 7 days.
As you might guess, I've been struggling with this issue, too. I'd love to have a simple system for reliable workstation backup that does not rely on keeping entire copies of all users' C: drives, that backs up Outlook data files (including the "nickname" file), favorites, "C:\program files\intuit\", and alerts me when someone creates "C:\Vital Data" to hold their really important data... I'm intrigued by EMC's
Content Addressed Storage which would allow me to keep full backups of all systems without wasting the space used by actual full backups (it makes one copy of "explorer.exe" with a given date, time, size and checksum, then just points to that copy for all systems that are using the same copy...)
Keep us posted on how you work things out!