So here's the deal, I have several PCs at home and I use an external USB hard drive for my back ups.
It gets pretty annoying to unplug and plug the drive on the specific computer that I want to back up files.
I was wondering if there was an affordable network solution for back ups. I have PCs running on XP pro and
a PC running on Linux.

thanks in advance

Oh so you mean like RAID array backups? You want backups to be done every day? If so - i really don't know...

No not raid back ups. Hardware that will work an a network and have it's own ip address. Something like a NAS but a lot smaller.

I actually go a step further and backup to Amazons S3 service, using JungleDisk. Takes a while to get it all up there, but once you do, incremental backups each night taker a few minutes. I have in excess of 200G backed up there and it costs me a few tens of dollars a month.

Here's a simple and quick solution I have actually used for a few clients.

Ethernet Based External Hard Drive.

Meritline.com sells an ethernet based external hard dirve kit (you add the drive).



The case is nice, lightweight and solid. And unlike some cheaper versions put out by competititors, this one supports NTFS.

With it being ethernet based you can just let it sit on your network as a standalone. Then you could use a scheduled backup program, but I prefer a real time backup. That means as soon as the file changes it automatically backs it up to the external.

YADIS! is an excellent freeware real time backup solution. Simple to use.

Nice, I have been looking for some new ideas for backup. Do they have a wireless version? I could power it from my car somehow and have it back up while it is in the parking lot. I would always have my off site backup and I would not have to do anything but check it every once in a while. Just kidding but I might try it.

Perfect that's exactly what I was looking for thanks.

You're welcome! Good luck!

One thing I forgot to mention is that the drive shows up as a regular lettered drive. Some of the lesser ethernet based kits allow you to access it only via ip address. In other words, when you click MY COMPUTER you'll see your drive just like any other.