>I apologize for re-opening this thread....but I am trying to put together a
>back-up strategy for a small (6 station) peer to peer windows network and
>some of the thoughts that showed up here have me a bit uncertain when I
>combine them with what I'm finding when I research the subject elsewhere.

I would seriously suggest spending money on putting a suitable size hard
drive in one machine - typically the fastest - and using that as a server.
Instill the idea into everyone that they should save everything on that
network drive. This then means that you have only one drive to backup by
whatever means you choose.

If you can justify the money to get the system organised so that you can
have mirrored drives then this will most likely save you time at the end of
the day. When you come to take the backup drive out of the machine in the
evening, put in the replacement, and leave it rebuilding the mirror onto the
replacement drive overnight, it should all be pretty invisible to the staff,
and minimal extra work out side of office hours for the person doing the
changeover.

Remember to factor in enough spare backup units to have monthly and yearly
backups if dealing with accounting files. This is probably one of the
biggest reasons tape gets used - the media is cheap enough that having a
Monday-Thursday set, plus a months worth of Friday sets, plus a years worth
of Monthly sets, Plus however many years of yearly backups you want to
maintain for accounting/tax purposes soon adds up. The problem comes that
someone has to hang around late or come in early to do the backup - I do not
recommend leaving the tape in the drive and going home while it runs. In my
time as a computer engineer I have seen too many problems resulting in a
lost backup.

The worst one, which was a feather in our company's cap, was when an
engineer was called at about 4:30pm on a Friday to say the customers tape
drive had a fault. He went and fixed it, the tapes were put in a fire safe,
and that night the whole factory burned down. The tapes were retrieved from
the safe, and restored onto an engineering machine on our premises, and the
client had an operational machine first thing Monday morning, with the data
as at end of business Friday. It really enabled them to sort out rapidly a
situation that could have been total chaos for them otherwise.

At the end of the day (sic) you have to decide how much data you can lose
before your business is adversely affected. It may be that the most cost
effective way is to get a proper file server system with mirrored drives for
data safety, and a tape drive for backup. a proper server system, such as
Windows NT, 2k, or XP, or Linux, will allow file permissions to be set in a
manner that means people can access only what they need.

A Linux server with Samba software will allow a respectable system to be
built on hardware that does not need to be pushing the bounds of technology,
and should give respectable speed. The samba software makes the Linux file
system look like a windows file system to your network. It also allows any
Linux printers to be used as windows printers.

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