We store all our files on a network drive. Now I know that illustrator performance improves if I copy the network files locally before opening them in illustrator, but this is a major pain because I have to copy them back afterwards and if there are linked assets involved it becomes too much having to verify that all the links are pointing to the correct location.

It would be nice if AI had an option to do this copying automatically so that all non-local files that are opened are copied first into a temporary local directory and then saved back locally before automatically replacing the networked files and ensuring that all linked content that was on the network is still linked to the networked versions.