Hi,

> 2TB external USB hard drive

^ that's the problem right there, not so much the CPU or the RAM, but
the USB bus. and yea Keith is right about getting a server that has
next business day support (e.g. from Dell) if you're serious about
backups.

> The environment I am trying to back up is 23 laptops, mostly OS X. They
> are generally only on the network from 10am - 5pm. The pool size is
> 434.71GB comprising 4522859 files and 4369 directories. Our network is
> 100Mbps.

I'm curious as to what your backup window is and what transfer
protocol you're using? Our users wouldn't be able to take the lag on
their machines if backups were occurring during business hours. Then
if they go off the network after EOB, how do you do backups

Here's a cheap setup I'd get from Dell (US business website):

PowerEdge T110 Chassis with upto 4 Cabled Hard Drives
Processor Intel® Core™ I3 530 2.93GHz, 4M Cache, 2Cores / 4Threads, 1066MHz
Memory 1GB Memory (1x1GB), 1066MHz, Single Ranked UDIMM edit
Hard Drives 160GB 7.2k RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive    edit
DVD+-RW drive (adds $30, you could remove this really)
3yr NBD onsite warranty

total = $600 when you incl shipping + tax from Dell. Then figure out
what memory you need for this box from crucial.com (Dell charges too
much). I'd get about 4GB then you could get the equivalent Micron RAM
part for much cheaper from these guys:

https://usm.channelonline.com/floridamicro/storesite/Search/Category/

Just, don't get generic (desktop/value ram) cause it won't work in
Dell servers. Finally get 3 1.5TB seagate drives (i think these are
still the best $/GB ?) and create a software RAID5. Again don't get
these from Dell since they over charge. You can use the 160GB as the
OS drive. That should put you between $1-1.1K . I wouldn't spend money
on fancy hardware raid cards unless your daily backup size is several
TB (e.g. >4TB).

HTH,
Sabuj Pattanayek

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