Hi, I have a SharePoint web application already set up which holds our intranet called zisharepoint on port 80. I would like to create a site for each department which will hold the department's files and will potentially replace files held on the network. Network files are in total about 1.5TB and broadly speaking there are about 5 departments so I would like 5 sites. Both the intranet and the file areas will only be accessible internally using windows authentication. For those of you who have experience in setting this up would you: 1. Use the current intranet web application (port 80) and create 5 new site collections - 1 for each department. Looks like this would keep Central Administration easy (e.g. blocked files) 2. Create a new web application on port 81 for all departmental files. Under this have 5 site collections. 3. Create 5 web applications - 1 for each department. Means 5 databases so good for restoring or dealing with database issues (only a specific department's file access could be down) but more complicated to administer e.g. blocked files. 4. Any other preferred option? Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Mark

I would suggest you to follow the 1st option, as you said this will keep your administration task easy. While creating a site collection put each site collection into a different content database, that would help you for better back/restore operation. Since your data is almost 1.5 TB i would suggest you to create more number of site collection to keep your site healthy (instead of storing all the documents into only 5 site collections, may be you can create a plan to split the documents into a more number of site collection) Thanks, Arun, Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.