Scott Silva wrote: > David A. Woyciesjes spake the following on 3/29/2007 6:29 AM: >> I'm going to be setting up a machine at home, for keeping backup >> copies of my data & software... the >> "server" is going to be a dual boot W2K/Linux machine, and I'll have >> MacOSX, W2K, and Linux clients accessing this over the network... >> ... >> I have a 60GB drive, and 2 80GB drives for it... >> ...I have an external 300GB drive with NTFS format... >> > The best common denominator would be fat32 on the external. Linux, Windows, > and I think even the Macs can read and write to it. The biggest limit to fat32 > is the maximum of 2 gig file sizes. > Have you thought about just looking for an old PII PC in a garage sale and > just making it a server? You could use something as simple as Freenas and make > it a network storage point. > Thought about it, and discarded it. IIRC, there is a ~32GB partition limit for FAT32. Or at least WinXP won't create them bigger than that. Considering the files I'll be storing, I don't want to deal with 3+ different partitions on the external drive. :) Freenas sounds interesting. I'll have to have a look at it. Part of the current (not definitive) plan is I would be using this a a workstation too. Keep the number of machines to a minimum. Rest of the basic idea: 1 All workstations could back up to either the external drive, or the server. 2 The server will sync with the external drive, at least once a week, using either unison(Linux) or SyncBack(Windows). 3 The server will rsync the main 80GB drive to the backup 80GB drive nightly. Yes, I know that I could get myself into trouble with the 300GB external drive, and only 80GB of backup space on the server. I will probably change the external drive to an 80GB NTFS partition, so I can't accidentally overfill the available space. I suppose then I could create an 80GB Ext3 partition, and some others for further backup & testing... -- --- David Woyciesjes --- ITS Help Desk Support Technician --- Yale University Client Support --- 100 Church Street South, Suite 214 --- New Haven, CT 06519 --- (203) 785-3200