Backup across 100mbit cat5 network to USB external HDD

[Merlin]

As subject - is this possible?

I am trying to provide backup for my home network, which has 5 PCs on it. Unfortunately, funds are limited, so I am looking at using a Maxtor Onetouch 120Gb drive hooked up to one of the machines via USB2, and imaging the hard drives of the PCs to this external drive with DriveImage 7.

Will this work, and am I making any silly errors by trying to do this?


Thanks

[directhex]

it ought to work, as long as the drive is given network write access. DriveImage can be picky over usernames though, so it might not cooperate first try

[Butuz]

Yep you can backup to that drive using simply Microsoft Backup if you have windows 2000 or xp. Just plug drive into a PC, share the USB drive on the network, map a network drive to the share on all your other PC's and then tell MS backup to backup to N:\Computername.bkf where N:\ is the mapped drive to the USB HDD and Computername is the computer your backing up.

In MS Backup Dont forget to tick the drives you want backed up, and also tick the "System State" box as this means you can do a full restore of registry etc. And dont forget when your backing up the PC with the actual USB drive installed, do not tick the USB drive in MS backup or you will backup the usb drive to itself and odd things may happen (such as the world imploding).

Butuz

[Merlin]

Thanks guys, all the machines are running windows 2000 so that shouldn't be a problem. I'll order the drive today and let you know how it goes.

Thanks again