[X4U] Backup Strategies - Need Recommendations!

[Joe Sporleder]

I have a small newspaper publishing network that averages 8 
workstations, most are running the latest version of MacOS X Panther, 
and an old one is running MacOS X Jaguar, plus a PowerMac G5 running 
MacOS X Panther Server. I have on one of my volumes on the server a 
folder called Backup Central, and inside a folder with the name of each 
one of my co-workers, which would be wonderful if they could at least 
save their user folder on their workstation to this folder, with iCal, 
Address Book and Mail data being the most critical of importance. In 
the old days before MacOS X, a Finder copy was sufficient, but with the 
growth of our amount of data, and MacOS X permissions, I'm looking for 
a bit more elegant solution and use a real backup program. Finally, I 
would like to backup that volume, plus 3 others on my server containing 
my design program's files, photoshop files, various FileMaker databases 
and so on, to one or two external firewire drives that I can disconnect 
and take home at the end of the day as an offsite backup.

Backing up from my Server to a Firewire drive on my workstation just 
with a Finder copy works fine. However, backing up User accounts from 
various workstations I have had mixed results, with MacOS X complaining 
about I don't have sufficient permissions for some items to copy to my 
backup area on the server. Often after tinkering with the user 
directory, it turns out to be an obscure preferences for a program that 
I've long since deleted from the workstation. Deleting the offending 
file is often the only way past it, as trying to change permissions 
from the Finder or using Disk Utility to repair permissions doesn't 
always work.

Therefore, I'm now looking for a good commercial backup program for my 
server and my network, and is smart enough to get past any permission 
problems, and finally, a smart copy that only backs up the files that 
have changed, as the amount of data I must now backup requires that 
level of efficiency (each of 3 crucial volumes on my server contain an 
average of 12GB of important data). I tried Retrospect a couple of 
times, but that was well before switching to MacOS X about a year and 
1/2 ago, and I wasn't too impressed with it then. Has anyone used Data 
Backup by Prosoft Engineering? It looks promising and it looks like I 
can outfit several workstations economically.

Joe