Take the 2-minute tour ×

I work for a public school, and our technology is several years old. Our IT budget is, like most government-run organizations, pre-set several years in advance. What I'm looking for is a way to back up user data, like teacher's documents, pictures, lesson plans, etc (Basically the contents of the C:\Documents and Settings[some user name] folder) to a central server.

Do you guys know of any open-source, or low-cost solution I could use for that purpose? I've considered writing a quick-and-dirty incremental backup script using xcopy myself, but I think a full-fledged piece of software would work better.

Thanks so much in advance for the help.

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Take a look at some of these prominent FOSS backups tools:

And a possible third related tool for image management:

share|improve this answer

You have Windows Server 2003, that suggests some kind of Active Directory environment.

If you do, and you have the server space, it's worth looking at either:

  1. Folder redirection, so that My Documents is redirected to \server\docs\username
  2. Roaming profiles, so that most of C:\Docs & Settings\username is backed up to the server at logoff.

Or a combination of both (ideal, as otherwise you end up with only some data backed up, if users don't use My Docs, or massive logon/off times as files sync).

This way all your data is centralised and you only have one machine to backup.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


