Choosing a backup system for a small office

Question

NAS

There is a small office (20 cars). Periodically I make backups of system disks with Acronis and merge them onto an external screw.
But firstly, it takes a lot of time (and working time), and secondly, the relevance of such backups leaves much to be desired.

Computers are not the first freshness, and therefore, after the next departure of the mainland with pulling data on the screw with it and the subsequent dead day off pulling this data, I thought about an inexpensive automatic backup system.

As I see it for myself, we take two external network storages (single-screw). One is used for permanent backups. The second as a backup of the first.

Why two and not one with a mirror? Well, firstly, if something happens to the piece of iron itself, then another question is how to correctly pull data from the screws, and secondly, it is possible to take one piece of iron out of the office, and thereby increase the reliability of such a solution.

I plan to have hardware like D-Link DNS-315 (although I won’t refuse a hint of a more convenient model for comparable money).

Now the actual questions
1. How, preferably free, to make full backups from machines (Windows 7-8 system)? And I would like it to support the schedule (I plan to make backups at night) and compression. Yes, and a fairly simple data recovery scheme. Under unix, offhand, it would be dd+gzip+cron, but... a Windows system.
2. How to synchronize between two storages?

Answer 1

Maybe Bacula is right for you?
Free, flexible, backups from any OS (Windows can backup using VSS, which makes it possible to backup directly while working on the machine).
But it is a little tedious to set up, but if you tinker, it works like a clock.
It also has a web interface - webacula.

Answer 2

It is better not to store user data locally at all ... and backup the entire storage.

Answer 3

maybe it's more logical to make a network share and backup it?

Answer 4

Akronis knows how to do everything if you use it and continue to use it, he even knows how to backup his current place in the cloud, you need to buy a place.

Answer 5

To create a complete image of the system of home computers, I have long and successfully used Macrium Reflect FREE Edition . Repeatedly recovered data with its help and cloned disks. A big plus is that the backup image can be connected as another disk in the system and removed from it, whatever you need. There is only one problem - the free version does not work under server OSes and does not see the dynamic disks that the system makes when you combine disks into a Windows RAID.
If you need to backup file by file, then pay attention to Runtime Software and their Shadow Copy utility , but compression will have to screw yourself.

Answer 6

in 2003 Windows and in 2008r2 regular backups to a regular network share are quite normal.
XP is no different for 2003, like the seven from 2008p2
, taking into account the staffing of the functionality in the system and the presence of differential backups, I would first look towards the regular system functionality.
ntbackup(2003) scripts well, there are a bunch of cmdlets in 7 for automating backup.
Well, the scheduler is standard in windows too.

Answer 7

For data, I can offer you CobianBackup, an excellent free program, very easy to set up, creates regular or incremental archives on a schedule. But I never backed up the system to her, I’m not sure that the second moment will do, if you have balls with resources that need to be backed up are decentralized, then the utility will have to be configured on each machine.
www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm