I landed a job at my school in one of the science departments. The guy's a big-time professor and I'm managing all his

computer systems. The guy that's doing this now is leaving and I'm taking over.

They use Windows XP, and they will not use Linux - it's simply not an option - at least with the computers they use. Linux

moght be an option for the file server and backup computers.

So I need some pointers. Right now they have a file server where everyone stores their files - about 80GB of data in all

(they have about 10 or so computers). The guy in the position now has two removable drives for backup. He inserts one, and it

overwrites the other. He periodically swaps them, so the oldest one is always being replaced. He also has a master backup

that he updates every few months. I personally think this is not very good - especially with such valuable data.

They're getting all new computers, so I'm going to try to automate everything and make things safer. I'd like to set the file

server up with a two-drive RAID mirror (not sure what level that would be), making it so there's always a live backup. In

addition to this, I'll have a computer across campus in another building configured with an identical RAID setup to the main

file server. I'll have it so all the files on the file server get backed up to this one once every week. Finally, I'll have a

master backup on another computer on this remote one (not RAIDed) to which all the files on the file server will get backed

up once every month.

What do you think of this? Is this a good setup? What should I do differently?

Is there a way when the computer does the backups to have it only copy new files (e.g., if the file modified date is the same

it doesn't copy it over)?

There will be ten to fifteen users making use of the file server. How fast should the processor be? Should it be 64-bit?

Should the user computers be 64-bit or 32-bit (we're upgrading them too)?

ah crap...I copied and pasted and I had word wrap on. Let me try that again...

I landed a job at my school in one of the science departments. The guy's a big-time professor and I'm managing all his computer systems. The guy that's doing this now is leaving and I'm taking over.

They use Windows XP, and they will not use Linux - it's simply not an option - at least with the computers they use. Linux moght be an option for the file server and backup computers.

So I need some pointers. Right now they have a file server where everyone stores their files - about 80GB of data in all (they have about 10 or so computers). The guy in the position now has two removable drives for backup. He inserts one, and it overwrites the other. He periodically swaps them, so the oldest one is always being replaced. He also has a master backup that he updates every few months. I personally think this is not very good - especially with such valuable data.

They're getting all new computers, so I'm going to try to automate everything and make things safer. I'd like to set the file server up with a two-drive RAID mirror (not sure what level that would be), making it so there's always a live backup. In addition to this, I'll have a computer across campus in another building configured with an identical RAID setup to the main file server. I'll have it so all the files on the file server get backed up to this one once every week. Finally, I'll have a master backup on another computer on this remote one (not RAIDed) to which all the files on the file server will get backed up once every month.

What do you think of this? Is this a good setup? What should I do differently?

Is there a way when the computer does the backups to have it only copy new files (e.g., if the file modified date is the same it doesn't copy it over)?

There will be ten to fifteen users making use of the file server. How fast should the processor be? Should it be 64-bit? Should the user computers be 64-bit or 32-bit (we're upgrading them too)?

Let me rephrase one of those sentences (it's pretty late here):

Finally, I'll have a third harddrive on this remote one (not RAIDed) to which all the files on the file server will get backed up once every month.

RAID 1 is Mirroring. While it does provide redundancy, it's not really considered a backup. The good news is, if one drives gives up the ghost and dies, the other takes over until you replace the bad drive and rebuild the RAID. However, if something should happen to both drives, without a proper backup, you'ld be in trouble. It's not likely that both drives would go bad at the same time. I've never seen that myself or heard of it. But, you should still be running backups at all times.

Most people use a daily backup if the data is important. Generally speaking, a full backup once a week followed by incrementals unless it's a small amount of data being backed up in which case, a full nightly backup works.

Also, you want to give serious thought to taking some of the backup's offsite in case of a natural disaster or fire.