Daniel Carrera wrote at about 08:25:21 +0200 on Saturday, May 23, 2009:
 > Les Mikesell wrote:
 > > I don't think scheduled stopping/starting would be a problem in practice 
 > 
 > I take it you also don't think that having BackupPC wake up to find no 
 > backup media will be a problem either. Right?
 > 
 > I can see myself getting a dedicated backup server in the future. Though 
 > part of me feels that this is overkill for a home network.
 > 
 > Anyways, thanks for all the help.
 > 

One thing to consider is buying a consumer NAS device like the D-Link
DNS-323. It is a small, high quality linux-based NAS that takes two
plug-in SATA disks. You can probably get the box plus two 1TB drives
for about $350-400 and then have a 1TB RAID device.

If you are willing to do a little Linux hacking (there are
instructions on the Wikki), you can install BackupPC directly on the
device which will then give you both a NAS functionality (for storage
or streaming) and backup.

Alternatively, you could just buy an old obsolete desktop PC, put in
some new drives and install Linux to get a more than capable Backup
server and effective NAS device that would be more than good enough
for a home network. If you can get the PC for near free, this option
will be even cheaper.

The advantage of a dedicated NAS is that it is small and typically
less noisy and power hungry. The disadvantage is that using a
dedicated (old) PC will typically be faster (since even 5 year old PCs
have faster processors than consumer NAS devices) and more expandable
(because they can usually take more than 2 drives).

The point is that it is neither very hard nor expensive to set up a
home network combined Backup server and NAS functionality. Having a
dedicated always-on functionality is much better than having it tied
to your laptop which may or may not be on at any given time.

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