Well Gottfried, if your primary reason for going either route is to store backup images, I'd look more carefully at the new pc from the image perspective before taking the leap. I've found network imaging to be cumbersome, and am going to buy a second hard drive to install locally primarily for this reason. But like I said before, the newer versions of the software may make network images more practical.
Since my system drive is unique and not typical, perhaps someone else with network image experience will post about the topic. My system is spread across 2 drive partitions, because of the way I unwittingly installed XP. Other than making backup images, the system works well this way. The result is I have to make one image of both partitions, and the image size is quite large.
I think images are best for backing up system drives, including installed programs. Data, which is not subject to registry entries etc. can be kept on a different partition and backed up using an archiver for better compression and flexibility.
For simplicity's sake and peace of mind, however, just imaging the whole physical drive works best for many. But this can be cumbersome to do with large hard drives over the network.
Hopefully you can get more input about this.
Esteban |
