It runs a RAID (well, one of the HDs is now down, so technically this RAID is not redundant, but it’s just a matter of putting in a new HD and rebuilding the RAID) so it is more robust than an external HD. It is always on and available, so scheduled automatic backup is much easier. It works for all platforms. No messy wires and power cords to deal with, and it works equally well with the Lady’s laptop in the next room connecting via WiFi.
I am using a trial copy of Dantz Retrospect Desktop to backup my TiBook. I set it up so it backs up to marilyn via an ftp account, and will automatically conduct an incremental backup 0200 hours everyday. With Retrospect I am able to restore to any snapshot image. There is a Windows version as well. It works in a client-server way, and comes with two additional licences for the client, so one can backup up to 3 computers with the standard package. When downloading the trial copy, Dantz wants your email address to send you the trial licence key. The welcome email I received contained a special discount code, which bought the price of the package down to US$99. The company has been around for ages, so they must be doing something right.
Since Mac OS X is *nix, it comes with a whole collection of backup programs, such as tar, cpio, pax and rsync. It wouldn’t be too hard or too time-consuming to put together some automatic script to conduct the backup, if I want to go cheap. Well there is another advantage using a common *nix backup program: the backup files will always be accessible. In comparison Retrospect uses a proprietory file format.
I think Win2000 and WinXP come with a reasonable backup software. Just mount a network drive on the home server, and backup to a file on the network drive. Or install cygwin on it together with the *nix backup goodies.
Marilyn’s CD-RW drive is busted. Eventually I am going to put in a DVD writer for archiving my backup to DVDs.