Get a port of GNU Tar for MS-Windows and install it and a SSH client on the Windows Machines. Use GNU Tar + SSH to ship the files. GNU Tar will preserve the file permissions. Once the tar files land on the remote (offsite box), unpack the tar file(s) to the local disk.
For the more adventurous, install Cygwin on the Windows machinesand then you can fire up a bash shell and do:
tar czvf - -C local-path file ... | ssh remotebox tar xzvf - -C path-on-remote-box
To restore:
ssh remotebox tar czvf - -C path-on-remote-box .|tar xzvf - -C local-path
Interesting, How I have been doing some files that don't need permissions is using VSS to snap an SQL and Exchange server (it flushes a consistent state to disc), the script then exposes the snap to a drive letter, and I rsync the files off the windows box to the CentOS DR server remotely. Only the delta gets transferred and works very nicely.
Problem is now I need to do this where perms are important for a file server with ~400G of some few million files. I am not sure what you meant about untarring the files after they land on the centos box? Wouldn't the file then lose its permission metadata?
The solution uses tools I am already using so it wouldn't be stretch to modify existing scripts, I am just not sure I follow you:)
Thanks so much! jlc