From: Les Mikesell Sent: January 17, 2012 05:56 > > Big disks are cheap these days - I wouldn't worry that much about the > total space that much and you'll still be able to keep a lot online. This is true for current hardware however I am attempting to reuse our existing hardware that has been pulled from our production systems. It tends to be older technology but still usable. In this case, it is a set of disk arrays using SCSI3 drives. > The db's are probably best handled in a pre-backup script that > dumps/compresses them, then excluding the live files - and then even > block de-dup won't help. Pst's are a problem any way you look at > them but more because of Outlook's locking than their size. Backuppc > is packaged in EPEL so it's easy to install and shows the compression > and file re-use stats so you'll know in a few runs how it will handle > your data. While all of this is true I was kind of hoping that I could come up with something that was more "plug and play". The LessFS looked promising. I will continue to check this concept out further (be it LessFS, ZFS, or something else) but I am going to be avoiding the bleeding edge and can only afford to spend a limited amount of time chasing this down before I have to bite the bullet and go with what we have. Thanks again of your feedback and to all the others who have responded. Everyone's comments have been greatly appreciated. Regards, Hugh -- Hugh E Cruickshank, Forward Software, www.forward-software.com