Anyone have any recommendations for a simple home office backup tool? Opensource/freeware would be a distinct advantage.

Something that could be used with external USB disks or even a NAS when I've cobbled together enough cash.

This morning I've looked at Cobian, Amanda, GFI and Titan and I want to stick pins in my eyes. So I've decided to hand my quest over to the collective consciousness of STW.

Ta.

Depends what you want to back up, but I use DropBox as an online mirror of my working documents.

https://www.getdropbox.com/gs

Its only good for a couple of gig without paying, but it's useful for my work documents.

If you want full system mirroring and restore functionality then you need something else. Sure windoze comes with something as standard?

I use BeyondCompare – its a paid for App, but cheap.

Very good at what it does though, and useful not just for backup but for syncing memory cards for taking work data with you to client sites etc and then syncing updates back again.

carbonite, not free but not too expensive

Ta Geoff. I quite like the look of that.

However, I'm looking at about 250Gb+ for starters, with minor incrementals weekly. So backup to a local device is necessary.

Most important is to backup the main XP Pro PC plus my Vista laptop. Once they're sorted, I sort the Mac (an old eMac) and the two Linux boxes.

There's Windows backup in XP / Vista.
Accessories-System Tools –

Others have sworn by SYncToy, free download from microsoft, but I couldn't get on with it.
There may be a tool free with your external HDD

Is Carbonite another on-line backup tool?

BeyondCompare looks slick, but at $80+, I think I'd prefer to go the opensource route.

There may be a tool free with your external HDD

Moses. Nope, I put them together myself.

..and the inbuilt Windows tools are not bad, but they won't do user profile/system files.

youd only need the standard edition at $48 but, yeah, theyve put the prices up since I bought my licence two years ago.

Ta Stoner. I missed that – looking again, it looks like a per-machine licence. Is that right?

EDIT: A single licence will allow one user on multiple machines – if that user has admin access, then all data should be available. How does it hande system files?