Backup Utility

ArcServe can do pretty much all of that - but you will likely need appropriate agents.

I used to use Arcserve....and while I agree that it does work as described above...I moved myself and all my clients to Backup Exec (now owned by Symantec).

Reasons:
Setting up Exchange backup with Arcserve was a multistep process.  With BE, just install the addon.
Setting up printed reports with Arcserve was a hit or miss situation.  Easy with BE.
The Job Log and reports with BE are cleaner and easier to follow.

BE can do everything you mentioned.

BE has the lion's share of the market for a reason.

Biggest problem with BE - it's now owned by Symantec.

Biggest problem with Arcserve - its owned by CA

That is by far not as bad as Symantec!

Five years ago, I completely agree.  Not so much anymore - CA has been under new new management and improving over the recent months.  Symantec hasn't made a product that doesn't harm your system more than it helps since 1994.  

Good thing about Backup Exec is that the current version was still developed before Symantec bought them.  But now... I wouldn't trust new products from them without EXTENSIVE, EXTENSIVE testing.

As for which is better, that really depends on the point of view.  I used to like ArcServe's methods of restoring files - you look up in the database and see every version of that given file.  With BE, you can't do that.  BE has good points too, but I don't think one is that much better than the other.

The problem with my network is that it has been created by someone else and it also has very old machines so I cannot backup the data from the laptops and desktops on the servers( I am afraid they will die sooner). I need to do it on the tapes so I will use as little hdd memory as possible. My problem with Arcserve now is that it doen't do it's job right but I guess I need to reinstall them from scratch, with all the modules. Plus I tend to agree with leew that CA is much easier to deal with and more reliable in their products. But I was wondering if there are any other good tools that can do this job.  

Only backup the data, not the whole notebook. Usually data doesn't take that much space and there is normally enough room on a server for that. What is the use of a server otherwise? Probably the notebook users already have the same data as what is on the servers, probably it is just no synchronized properly because there will be different versions of each file around, something which must be avoided and can only be resolved if there is 1 version of the file on a server. If you want to copy the notebook, you should get some external disks and use a software like acronis trueimage to create images of these machines until you have properly organized the IT system. Disks are cheap these days.

http://acronis.com

well i agree with rindi...
today is everyone looking for good soft for back up...
and i emphatically recomend to all of u to use True Image.
it can do many things.
As for author there 9.1 version of ATI , for servers.