[Eclug] External USB drive instead of tape for server backup

Berend Tober wrote:
> Has anyone here ever abandoned the venerable workhorse of tape in favor
> of using a set of several, cheap, external USB hard drives for server
> backup? For a small business, buying 250 GB drives, even say four, would
> be cheaper than equivalent tape backup capacity, and I think the data 
> transfer speed is sufficient.
>
> I pose the question here because I know these drives are aimed at the
> lowest common denominator, and as such typically come formatted FAT32
> from the factory. That may be fine for an individual user, who would own
> all the files anyway, but for a multi-user operating system supporting,
> say, ext3, storing to FAT32 would, I think, lose all the good 
> meta-data like owner and mode. So my real, or my follow-up, question 
> is whether it is possible to scrap FAT32 on one of those USB drives 
> and instead create
> something more useful, like ext3, NTFS, or even Netware file systems 
> instead, so that large files, like from tar, can be handled, or so that
> user and permission info could be retained natively.
>
Brendan;

What I have done at home (for my multiple systems (6+) is to setup a NAS 
repository with multiple 250GB drives using the NASlite+ software from 
www.serverelements.com.  I believe it will allow you to accomplish most 
if not all of what you are requesting.

Just my $.02 worth.

Bob