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best and cheap solutions for backing up windows 2003 with external USB drives

Hello guys.
I have windows 2003 with RAID 5 with 3 sata hard drives.
I would like to back up daily base with usb or nas drives.
I was looking at Maxtor One Touch III TUrbo 1TB with Raid 0 or Raid 1 or
Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB - USB 2.0 Instant Storage - WDG1U5000N.

But would this drive be compatable with Windows 2003 server operating system??
I have to backup server drives every night daily base and i don't know what i have to get for cheap and depenable External USB drives.
Could you guys recommand me some good solutions for this case.
Thank you so much..

Jim

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Gary Case

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rindi

I've had so many bad experiances with maxtor that I definitly don't recommend using anything from that manufacturer, and certainly not anything using raid0.

I'd use a USB dock you can get from the following site, here you can easily attach any harddisk which is much cheaper than buying a complete, closed box:

http://www.wiebetech.com/home.php

r-k

If you're backing up a server you'll have to make sure the backup software can backup open files as well (unless you plan to shut the server down for each backup).

gurutc

All the comments above are great.

Only to add to them I want to say that I'm using several of the LaCie Big Disks as part of a 3 Terabytes per night backup solution and they work very well. They're fast and have proven reliable so far under extreme use.

Just be sure to have two copies of your backed up data no matter what you're saving it on. That means backup to two separate disks or to disk and tape or disk and optical such as dvd.

- Travis=gurutc

r-k

"be sure to have two copies of your backed up data"

Great advice. There is no worse feeling than discovering that your sole backup disk had a "bad spot" just when you really need it the most :(