[blue68f100]

I have not used the Guardian OS, It is suppose to be more advanced and user friendly. I do not know about the Hot Swap, will need to read the specs on that. Download the Admin Manual and look it over. Buying the Snap4200 may NOT get you any SnapOS updates. It may for the guardian OS, if it's in the warranty period. You may be able to get a service contract that will get you updates. Adaptec seams to want to sell these service contract. They want even acknowledge you exist without one.

We get a lot of persons through here after trying to deal with Adaptec. All having a low opion of them. They have pretty much shut down all free support. The only thing left is the Knowledge base and it is difficult to find anything with it.

Since Adaptec bought Snap, I have no idea if there is any development work being done on the GuardianOS or SnapOS. When Vista comes out, it will present a brand new set of problems. The networking has totaly been re-written.

The guardian OS is stored on the HD. To the best of my knowledge the Guardian OS units do not have a way to reinstall the OS from a disk/image. They do have a builtin procedure for transfering the OS to new drives. I would recomend pulling and making a image file/cd of the main drive, this gives you a backup of the Boot OS drive. It's similar to the 2200. Requires a image file to setup new drives if none are present.

I hope my rambling did not get you totally confussed. I would love to have a Guardian OS Unit to play with and/or replace my 2200.