Backup solution needed for Mac & PC

[Sly]

Ok here is my situation; I run a small 3 man office, we have one Apple Powerbook running 10.5 (mine) and two PC laptops with XP. We are all running on an 802.11 b wireless network (one PC only has a 'b' card) - Airport Express.

Currently we have no backup solution!! I have just ordered a WD 500GB external drive USB2. What do I need to do so that we can all back up to this drive and all read each others files. Any ideas on back up software that will make the task simple so everyone will do it regularly, Mac & PC? I use CCC on my home Macs but I don't think that route going to work here?

 

[blodwyn]

Ok here is my situation; I run a small 3 man office, we have one Apple Powerbook running 10.5 (mine) and two PC laptops with XP. We are all running on an 802.11 b wireless network (one PC only has a 'b' card) - Airport Express.

Currently we have no backup solution!! I have just ordered a WD 500GB external drive USB2. What do I need to do so that we can all back up to this drive and all read each others files. Any ideas on back up software that will make the task simple so everyone will do it regularly, Mac & PC? I use CCC on my home Macs but I don't think that route going to work here?

Are you wanting to use the WD500 to take full backups, or use it as a shared drive containing files that everyone can access/create/modify the content of? It's kind of hard to to mix the two purposes and keep everything in sync.

If you're looking for a shared drive, then as a suggestion, you might want to consider DropBox. It's coming out of beta pretty soon, and handles the sync's automatically. Alternatively for file sync'ing you could do worse than look at Chronosync for the Mac and Second Copy for the Windows systems. Both can be automated so no involvement is required. Either that or invest in a NAS box.

 

[Sly]

I suppose I was thinking about a shared drive as well as an emergency back up. We often work 'on the road' and it would be useful to have access to all the shared data on the communal drive when others are out of the office then sync the laptop with the shared drive when it returns.

 

[blodwyn]

I suppose I was thinking about a shared drive as well as an emergency back up. We often work 'on the road' and it would be useful to have access to all the shared data on the communal drive when others are out of the office then sync the laptop with the shared drive when it returns.

So you want bi-directional sync'ing between the Mac and PC's and the communal drive.

I haven't actually used this, but Super Flexible File Synchronizer looks to do what you want, and is available for Mac and Windows platforms. The obvious problem you may run into is when the person on the road modifies a file, as well as someone in the office, so you end up with a sync conflict.

I also still think DropBox may be a good solution for you, as you wouldn't need a communal drive - the data sits on every system and all the systems are kept in sync by the DropBox service. That way you could just dedicate the WD500 to full backups.