Client of mine has approached me with a £1,200 budget.

They have opened an office with 5 people. They want to have a accessible shared storage device, switch, business router, the ability to backup and the ability to dial in.

I am aware for the budget they are not really going to get much of a server.

Does anyone know of any networkable harddrives that will backup to other attached storage (if that makes sense.) Suppose i could always recommend a cheap recon server with window 2000 and possibly utilise offsite backup over the internet.

any ideas for centralised storage and the backup for such a small budget would be appreciated. I dont need help with cheap switches/routers or remote dial solutions as this is what i specialise in.

thanks in advance

Look up "Network Storage Drive" or NAS

PCWorld sell them and price has dropped enormously in recent years, less than £100. Maplin and even Aldi have sold them before now.

I use a Freecom drive, it has RJ45 LAN and USB connectors and can also act as an FTP server on the internet with passwords and user defined areas (if your router has an internet connection).

Using the RJ45 connector it is just a matter of plugging it into the back of the router (after connecting it to an individual PC to set it up).

There are a few software bugs in mine but it is quite a few years old, I guess by now they are a lot better.

Alternatively, servers for a small business network don't have to be that high performance, a budget PC will normally give more than adequate performance, just a matter of getting a big drive or two in there. Its only when you have loads of users trying to access at exactly the same time that you need high performance. No doubt some people may disagree on this.

I would not recommend using wireless networking unless you really can't do it wired, whilst they can perform well, they also can have quite poor performance for numerous reasons which makes hard work for users and administrators alike.

Not looking to do wireless. I want the shared storage (be it a network harddrive or a server) be be backed up by a removable device eg. tape. I dont this the networks hdds are able to make backups.

I have not really looked at cheap desktops as it doesn't give them much room to grow as i would like it to run SBS, ideally with a Raid setup with the ability to connect to a tape drive.

ps, thanks for the PM, i am fully aware on how they work, but my problem is that i want it to be backed up and am not sure if this is achievable with them

Looks as though this might be a possibility with its hot swappable 2nd drive.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-Rea...lectronics&qid=1267010846&sr=1-4

This one looks even better, didn't realise have far they have come on. Thanks for the push in the right direction

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig...ectronics&qid=1267011183&sr=1-16

Thanks for the links, I wasn't aware what they are up to these days either.

I also wasn't aware that tape drives still exist, it was a godsend when we moved up from QIC to DAT, hopefully they have gone further and faster by now.

My Freecom IS my removable backup system, if it was critical I would get a second one with independent archiving, but that is cheap-skating and perhaps not a professional solution

you might want to try the HP Mediasmart Server, comes preinstalled with Windows Home Server.

https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/270?gclid=CM_0_fiqi6ACFZBb4wod0V2Adg

or try this site

http://www.wegotserved.com/

That is sweet