>Funny you should mention Ghost, I'm using it for my network NT install right at this very moment :) It's just a base Ghost clone install, though it does have MS Office. It's not worth the trouble of an extra drive just for a test machine. And if 1000 users need extra drives to move to NT, well, you can forget moving to NT :)

:) I meant use the extra drive just for your test install. It takes about 15-20 minutes to clone over about 800 megs (for me at least) instead of the 6-8 hours of re-installing NT and all the apps.

As far as the users, I keep a single drive that works for any machine. If a machine dies, I just install, do the clone, and take it back out. Have NT, will travel ;) I only support 20 machines over 2 seperate offices, a little less than a 1,000 ;) so....

>That's an interesting idea about storing the Ghost info on the server - but I don't know that it would be practical for 1000 users constantly cloning. The LAN security people might not like it, either.

I have not used it but they tout IC3 as the best way to do the deployment (Win 2000 has that capability built-in AFAIK). IC3's multi-casting is supposed to use the same band-width regardless of the number of machines being cloned simultaneously.

>If we ever move to NT, I think users (including me) will have to get used to doing regular server backups of all our local stuff for precaution.

Oh I agree. Our users are supposed to copy all the work off to the server for storage an a daily basis. Now when a station dies, I just reclone it. They are back up in a 1/2 hour max :)

>Boy, is it easy to hose NT (in my environment, at least). I don't know if we'll be moving to NT now, there are too many risks at this point, that outweigh the benefits. But I will keep testing, anyway.

Hehe. I've hosed my own more than I care to remember. NT is a great platform though. I ran 95 for awhile at home (now it's 2000, 95 made me nuts).

>I have Ghost at home on my 98SE, also, though haven't had to use it yet, but it seems like a good idea to have.

I bought 2 new compaq's for my bosses a year ago. They use there own version (or it has thier own UI) that is cool. The ship a CD with a clone of the installed drive. You machines gets hosed all you do is insert the CD and reboot. Your are right back to a working version.