I'm looking for recomendations for simple backup software for SBS2003 servers that will backup to external HD's.

By simple, I mean something that will provide a "click here to backup" desktop icon, will overwrite any exiting backups on the drive without prompting and doesn't keep a media library or anything complex like that, but ideally needs to run as a service.

Anyone know of anything?

Use the builtin windows backup utility, it should do everything you need.

Use the builtin windows backup utility, it should do everything you need.

:iagree:

You can use it from the command line (there are switches for everything). Get the switches right and then put it in a cmd file.

We use Second Copy on our SBS 2003 server in conjunction with windows backup. Windows backup creates the back ups of Exchange into one (big!) file, then second copy runs to copy all the user and file data and the Exchange file to a removable hard drive.

Second Copy keeps a log and will email if there are problems. It also runs some scripts before starting to back up the Sage database that's on another server.

Second Copy: Secure your data with automatic backup software

The removable hard drive has TrueCrypt on it to protect the data from prying eyes but unlike a backup with Windows backup if the server goes down or some other disaster, sticking the removable hard drive on any other PC, installing the TrueCrypt driver off the drive and the password and then sharing the drive over a network means a really really quick back up and running time for everyone's data, which is important to us. Windows backup file has to be written to somewhere before you can get to the data.

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

By the way, use Second Copy, or any other backup application, as a service, do not rely on a 'click this icon' to do a backup, it will get forgotten and sod's law will come in to play!

Edited 29 September, 200916 yr by maffwilson
Added suggestion about not having a click to back up icon...

Forgot to say in my previous post that you can Add a Scheduled Task to kick off the command file you have created to make it automatic.