the big problem is just the philosophy of how Pro-E saves things.
the act of saving a copy each and every time a user hits save may seem like a good idea. and maybe it was back when Pro-E was first developed on Unix machines. but now, it just seems silly to do this.
as the good Doctor suggested, make a mapkey that saves and purges at the same time and you effectively create an autosave while also removing any of the alleged benefit of having a backup copy created. I was instructed by a PTC trainer to create this very mapkey back when I first took training on Pro-E in 1997. so a PTC trained trainer is telling me to override the "safety" feature built into Pro-E? silly.
now, with windchill, I have the ability to go back to previous revisions more easily anyway so the local copies for me are useless anyway.