Extra computers

Clarifications

Using old computers for backing up critical files is being penny wise and pound foolish.

Yes, you could save some money by not adding capacity to your server. However, the reliability of the old computers and difficulty in accessing files from them will more than offset any hardware cost savings.

You should first review the data stored on your backup drive and see what can be archived. That in itself may free up a lot of space. Then, add capacity to the server drive to at least cover what you anticipate for the next 3 to 5 years.

Chas

Depends on your situation. If you have no other choice then there is no downside... If you have other options then you could say: Its a retired machine so its obsolete, so to speak, and transfer rates will suffer. There are some upsides though...you can setup a file server and run backups...but I would just spend the $500 or so and get a NAS (Network Area Storage).

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that you would have the computers connected to the network, using their hd space for backup.

Several reasons come to mind:

Reliability (especially the hard drives--how long will they last?)

Size--some older computers have small hd's which might make managing backups difficult

Management--additional management complexity due to having the backups distributed across different machines.

OS Limitations--if you have a machine with lots of storage and have several computers backing up to it at the same time, you may run into issues with the number of simultaneous TCP connections. XP Home is limited to 5, XP pro is limited to 10, 2000 (I think) is limited to 10 also.

Sorry, sir, but I don't think this is a great idea. If you wanted to use just the hard drives themselves by putting them all in one computer or into your server or by putting them in external hard drive enclosures, that would seem to be a bit easier to manage and use, but you still have the fact that hard drives are likely to fail after several years.

First and foremost, you need a reliable backup system. Don't jeapordize it simply to make use of old computers. You cannot afford to have your backups fail when you need them.

Also, you might want to think about using multiple external hard drives for your backups and rotate them, keeping one of them offsite in case there is a fire or something like that. (It's not nice to think about, but if that happened, you'd not want to lose all your company data in addition to the physical damage.)

I hope you mean a raid-array on a file server that gets backed up to tape every night, correct? You don't seriously mean a 'single spinning hard drive' to backup the entire workplace?

I can think of lots of reasons why old PCs are not the right solution.

First, hard drives wear out and die, and old PCs tend to have old hard drives.

Second, PC power supplies die pretty easily as well, sometimes taking the old hard drive with it.

Using old PCs means you need to put into place a big expensive KVM switch, or else have a pile of keyboards and mice connected, with a monitor to plug into each one. You also would need a lot more network ports, network cables, etc.

Actually, you can turn an old computer into a NAS drive, sort of, by installing an operating system made for this purpose. One example of this is Openfiler. You can watch a podcast (which doesn't require an ipod, btw) about it here: http://www.itidiots.com/content/view/108/67/ . The first part of the podcast is about raid, but the last half is about openfiler, a free OS that can turn a computer into a NAS drive that can be configured through a web interface. It has advanced NAS features, such as iSCSI. There is also a Microsoft OS that does the same kind of thing, and I think it also is free. This has some disadvanteges over a real NAS device, but it may be an option for some people. However, I do not have experience with Openfiler (yet) to vouch for it.