Maximum PC

I have enjoyed your magazine for years and have build several PC's using your recommendations. My ongoing interest has been in creating a home backup solution for all of my family's PCs. I have several desktops and laptops. My son is in college and my backup solution needs to include backing up his laptop which is out of town. I have experimented with FreeNAS and recently had Microsoft Home Server 2011 running. I had WHS running with Lights-out, which created a very efficient solution, but after a couple of reconfiguration things didn't turn out as expected and I haven't taken to the time to rebuild and reconfigure. I would really enjoy ongoing articles on home backup solutions. I would like to ask that MaximumPC take the challenge to provide it's subscribers with reviews and in-depth articles on backup solutions. Not just reviewing paid services or building a server to be used as a NAS but providing in-depth configuration details feature lists and comparisons to previous backup articles/reviews. Minimum features would be not only internal LAN backup but, how to backup a laptop that resides out of town. What solutions does Linux have, is WHS or Windows 8 the answer. Are the NAS in a box solutions the way to go. Which ones provide internal LAN and internet connected backup solutions. My goal is not to end up paying a monthly service but the provide the backup solution with repurposed hardware I may already have. Advance feature would be to use Crashplan free to backup my backup solution to a remote PC at a friend or remote family's PC.

I have WHS 2011 running (inspired by a MPC article a couple years ago), and it is the clunkiest piece of crap I could imagine. The backups get corrupted every time WHS updates. Good information on WHS - even its current versions - is surprisingly hard to come by even on enthusiast sites.
In other words, I too would love to see more of this area of computing in the magazine.

So you want to be able to back up your laptop to your solution back home? Are we talking about small amounts of data in the megabytes range, or entire backups in the gigabytes range? Because gigabytes of data seems like a stretch to ask for, especially in areas with a spotty connection to begin with.

One suggestion I saw on this though is to use a VPN. I think this would probably be a good idea from a security standpoint as well: the less exposed your backup solution is to the internet, the better.

The amount of data being backed up from the remote laptop would be kept to a minimum. The initial or full backup could occur when the laptop is at home for a visit. His music and picture libraries that are in the 100 gigabyte range could easily be backed up when wired connected to my LAN. His remote backup requirements of making daily, if not more backups of his school work would be very small.

It would be nice to see more posts on the interest MPC doing ongoing articles on home backup solutions. If interested post a positive reply.