----- Original Message -----
> From: "gregrwm" <tclug1 at whitleymott.net>
> BackupPC has been doing my own and my clients' backups for years now,
> i'm not aware of anything that competes. 

I have to agree. I've been administrating BackupPC servers for over a decade now, and it's worked really well. The documentation is basically "read the config file" and if you do that, the comments in it explain everything pretty well. The only real downside is that it should be set up on a dedicated server (tho if you just give it its own storage disk that works, just doesn't protect against as much).

It doesn't deal with multiple external hard drives as nicely as some backup scripts, but:
a: one shouldn't fully trust external drives unless they're tended by a person who verifies that the drive is plugged in and the data went on it
b: there's no harm in having a second backup method that sends the data to disk (even if it's just running rsync by hand).
c: if you just use plain rsync to copy your data to the external drive, you don't have to worry about strange formats your data may be in.

As for things which compete with BackupPC, Crashplan is pretty good. It's payware and occasionally buggy, so if you use it a support contract is worthwhile. However it's pretty powerful and featureful from a business backup perspective.

-- 
Carl Soderstrom
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com