!! Backing up home workstations to single place

[mixxer]

Is there a way to do this without buying something like ARCServe which is $1500?

There're 3 workstations at home. I want to setup a backup server that backs up the HD's of each of the workstations automatically in set intervals. All workstations run Win2k w/ FAT32 partition, and the server can run anything I choose.

I plan on using a 40gb HD for the backups, which should be enough if the backup can be compressed. I don't care about having backups of different dates... I want to have it so it makes the most recent backup on that volume.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

There's a reward!!

 

[LordOfAll]

Well I know that w2k server has a built in backup program. I'm not sure about the workstation version though. Just share and map the entire drive then backup to the hd on the server.

 

[mixxer]

Does the backup program do compression? I tried w/ W2k Professional and it doesn't seem to compress anything.

 

[miken]

Dunno about Win2k, but NT4 does not do compression, you have to get a 3rd party software program to do that. You can map drives to do local backup, and do a schedule wither the scheduler service. NT4 tho, may be that 2k is better.

 

[Cnuke]

Win2K will do hardware compression, but not software. So you will need to make sure that your hardware supports it.

Just as Miken said, map a drive and include that drive in your backup.

One thing to be concerned with is you registry on the workstaions with the mapped drive. Make sure that you make a copy of the registry and save it on the hard drive before you run the backup. If you do not do this when you restore it you will have registry probs.