> I am trying to upgrade my home backup system.  So, I was considering one of 
> those network router devices into which you can plug in USB external hard 
> drives so that they function as network drives.  Now, I have 3 computers - 1 
> with Vista, 1 OSX and linux and I wanted to backup all of them over the 
> network on the same external drive.
>
> (1) Can I use Samba in such a situation with a single ext3 FS on the external 
> drives ?
>
Yes. Do this on your linux machine.
>
> (2) Do I need to connect the external drive to a linux box on which I run 
> Samba ?
Yes
>Or is it possible to do some kind of firmware install of Samba on the external 
>drive itself (I did read somewhere that there are some ethernet drives 
>available with Samba installed as firmware).  That way I can plug in my 
>external drives directly into the router.
>
Unless you are a linux expert I would not attempt this.

>
> (3) Finally, do I have to install some versions of Samba on both the Vista 
> and the OSX computers
>  so that they can see the Samba exported external network drive ?  If so, are 
> there binaries available for OSX & Vista or do I have to do a cygwin install ?
>
You never install samba on windows machines. But the OSX machine you
will probably need samba.

With all of that said why not use a network backup solution like
bacula or amanda?

John
-- 
To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
instructions:  https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba

Reply via email to