CentOS - Nov 2011 - External HDD query

Greetings,

I have a USB external 2TB HDD with one NTFS partition which is to be
used for backup up from about 5-8 workstations (all Win*) all are shut
down when the office is closed

I am playing around with Amanda server on Centos 5.7.

(It is over 3 years since I last implemented Amanda for about 50
workstations mostly Fedora and couple of XP boxes -- it sang and
danced quite nicely.)

Now the issue I have is:
1. I want the External HDD to appear at another mountpoint than the
/media/<HDDLabel> persistantly on the centos box..
2. How do I ensure that amanda starts and completes its backup say
between 0800hrs and 1900hrs. (/ducks -- I _know_  it is amanda
related, I am crosing my fingers here)
3. Is Amanda really a good choice or an overkill in this scenario,
given that this is a small s/w development shop where linux expertise
is *not* available?
4. Is there an alternate simpler automatic network backup? (Bacula too
seems overkill)
5. Amanda is in its 3.x avatar ("The most recent stable release is
version 3.3.0"). Whereas Centos 5.x yum install yeilded (I dont know
from where) amanda-server-2.5.0p2-8.el5 which -- as is usually
expected -- a bit dated
6. The Windows client is 3.1.3. Will the ancient server and shining
new client play nicely?
7. Is there a howto using rsync/rdiff given that Windows Scheduler is
not exactly like our trusty, mature cron.

The centos wiki on this matter is, well, a tad old.

Surely the Centos server, which I introduced, in this shop is going to
stay and will not go away.

Of course RDIFF and other things are valid provided I have another Centos box.

Any answers appreciated.

TIA

-- 
Regards,

Rajagopal

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 3:55 AM, Rajagopal Swaminathan
<raju.rajsand at gmail.com> wrote:
> 3. Is Amanda really a good choice or an overkill in this scenario,
> given that this is a small s/w development shop where linux expertise
> is *not* available?
> 4. Is there an alternate simpler automatic network backup? (Bacula too
> seems overkill)
Look at backuppc.  It has a nice web interface to manage it and
browse/restore backups and it compresses and pools identical content
to hold much more online than you would expect.   It is all controlled
from the linux side and can work with windows either over smb or you
can install cygwin rsync to save bandwidth.  You would want to format
the drive with a linux filesystem, though.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com