I just started working on a project at a new company and noticed that they handle local and roaming profiles in an unusual way. First of all, I'm not a Sys Admin by any stretch of the imagination. But as I understand it, with roaming profiles, when the user logs into the system, the system will check which profile (local or roaming) is more current (up to date) and use that profile. When the user logs off, the local profile is copied back to the server. This organization copies the profile down to the workstation when the user logs on and copies the local profile to the server when the user logs off. But they also have a policy setting to delete the local profile after being copied to the server when the user is in the process of logging off. Now if for any reason the server with the roaming profiles is not available and the user logs into the system, he/she will only get a brand new local default profile. Absolutely none of his/her settings such as printer settings, custom Word settings etc. will be available. I asked the sys admin why this was done and he could not give an adequate explanation other than that's the way it's always been done.

So, my question is why would an organization always delete the local profile after copying it to the server when the user is logging off?