hi, i recenly talked my dad into buying a server for his small business and i set it up for him and everything is working nicely. now i need a backup system for him. i started to google some back backup solutions but they were way too expensive for his backup needs. he only needs to backup about 15-20gb, if that much. i am open to suggestions on other backup solutions. thanks! im not dumb im just to lazy to google it!

Check out Norton Ghost. Maxtor has a program called Retrospect that it bundles with their external USB 2.0 HDDs. You can set the program to automatically back up the data to external HDD daily.

i heard hdd backups are not reliable because they can fail. is this true? im not dumb im just to lazy to google it!

Ghost is not a backup program, it is an imaging program made to copy hard drives and partitions. I suppose you could use it as a backup program if you save your data on a separate partition but it isn't the best solution. " heard hdd backups are not reliable because they can fail. is this true?" That statement is too generic to answer. What type of backup do you think is prone to failing? A tape backup can have a higher failure rate then say backing up to another hard drive or CD-R/DVD-r but generally backups are stable. I use a progrma called SyncBack. it's cheap and has tons of features. Check it out at http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse.html

I’ve used Norton Ghost to create images of my C: partition so I have an “undo” if it gets hosed during a software or hardware change. It has also been handy when a Trojan has blown through my antivirus and spy sweeper. These images can be written to another partition, another HDD, or directly to a DVD. I’ve also used Norton Ghost to backup the data partition of my HDD. The image will restore an exact copy of the original partition or individual files can be restored from it. I’ve tried Retrospect but I’m not as familiar with it as Ghost. My friend’s engineering firm uses this and a 160GB Maxtor USB 2.0 HDD to back up their server every night. The software creates a set of backups (MON, TUE, etc) and has not failed them after use for more than a year.