[ale] Need advice on home back-up solution

[Chris Ricker]

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Bill Hamilton wrote:

> I have a RedHat 9 GNU/Linux system with a new 80GB hard drive and 
> several Windows 98SE/2000/XP machines at home in which I need to 
> automatically backup user created information.  This inludes Microsoft 
> office files, digital pictures (scattered throughout the hard drive), 
> browser favorites and web autofill forms (RoboForm or something like 
> that...my wife depends on it...I don't know).
> 
> I need a solution (probably made up of OpenSource/Free Software and 
> cmd/batch/windows scripting scripts) where each of my various Microsoft 
> based operating systems routinely backup user created information to an 
> ftp or smb server (GNU/Linux box listed above).  I do not have a tape 
> drive on each machine nor a CD Burner (however the newest upstairs Sony 
> Viao does have a DVD-R/RW burner so I could weekly pull these archives 
> off of the Linux server and burn to DVD as long as these archives are 
> less than 4.7GB each).  I do have a spare 17GB hard drive and I was 
> thinking of putting this also in the GNU/Linux box as a mirrored 
> partition just in case...probably a good idea before I go too far down 
> the road doing work on this fresh install of RH9.

Maybe look at amanda. It can backup windows shares via Samba, and there are 
also native clients for windows, though I've never used those.

later,
chris