also operationally it's easier... you can rely on replication to backup those files instead of separate scripts that would need to work in-conjunction with the

also operationally it's easier... you can rely on replication to backup those files instead of separate scripts that would need to work in-conjunction with the database replication. If say you have the database with blobs - you can restore the db and everything is back up and running. If instead, you need to also restore the individual files... well - not only do you have lots of individual disk writes, you also have to make sure you still have all the files...