To add to what David Trask had to say.. Use SCSI if you can! I don't! I have used IDE drives and now SATA. We just can't afford SCSI disks. I've had three or four early failures of these drives. Make and model makes no difference. They just can't seem to take the vast seeks/reads/writes like SCSIs can. I've been on this list asking questions about remounting/formatting/fixing perms bla bla bla for years. SCSI Also, be sure you have a well wired solid network. Mixed up twisted pairs, unshielded cat5e over florescent ballasts and too many unterminated cables/antennas can cause havoc. Sometimes causing trouble on a parallel windows system before impacting your Linux/LTSP boxes; and really making life rough on the techs, who may blame the linux boxes rather than the poor network or the virused-up-windows station first!! <end rant> Jim