What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the GAC?

Question

And on top of that, are there cases where one has to use the global assembly cache or where one cannot use it?

Answer 1

Advantage:

• Only one place to update your assemblys
• You use a little less hard drive space

Disadvantage:

• If you need to update only one website, you can't. You may end with the other websites in the webserver broken

Recommendation: Leave the GAC to MS and friends. The gigabyte is very cheap now.