After many years of accidentally deleting or losing data, I have come to a point where that should no longer happen.
When my old machine died, I thought I would turn it into a backup server. I was unable to make that dream come true as it was too far gone to resurrect. I was however able to find an adequate machine for $50 that does all I need it to. I wanted something that would be able to work cross platform as I currently have 2 windows machines and I want to eventually buy a Mac Book. The only option that seemed to be the right decision was Linux, specifically Ubuntu.
After working on many different options, I found what I believe will be the easiest and best way for my specific situation. I have samba running on my Ubuntu Intrepid machine with the built-in windows backup client backing up the machines on a weekly basis. While I haven’t researched it yet, from what co-workers have told me Apple’s time machine program should work much the same.
This link was the clearest on how to set samba up: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202605
From there it was just like sharing folders or drives in Windows.
Now that my testing is complete, I can add some hard drives and put it in production mode. My wife is so thrilled that she shouldn’t have to worry about losing data anymore.