Backup Methodologies

[ObiWanToby]

I have been trying to be pretty good about backups. I have made the mistake of using RAID 1 as a way of protecting my files (I know it was dumb ... ). I mistakenly corrupted the file system (updated RAID drivers, which apparently freaked out the the array) and had to recover data (in a very painful way). So now I am looking for a better solution.

I have two laptops (OSX and Windows 7), two desktops (Windows 7), and one server (Windows Server 2008 R2). My server is where most of my files will reside (music, videos, and pictures that I want accessible from all computers are exclusively stored there). The server will also host the desktop and laptop backups (I figured I could just set up a SAMBA share and use my Windows 7 backup util to backup to the network folder, not sure what to use for my OS X machine).

On my server I want to break the RAID. My question here is what is a good way to store files and then back them up on the other hard drive? I could manually write a script to 7zip the files and archive them on the other drive, or simply just copy the files to the other drive, but then I feel I would be misssing out on a good incremental backup recovery system. I am open to commericial software, like Acronis Trueimage. At least a few people liked that in the Definitive Best Backup Sofwater 2012 Thread.

Another problem is adding storage. I did like the concept of Windows Home Server (before Vail) of the drive extender. You could choose to make files redundant on other drives and it would extend your pool. Both very useful features. Right now having separate drives means I would have to manually shuffle files around between drives, and make sure that each is backed up. It certainly is doable, but are there any commericially available software packages that emulate the drive extender? Or how do you guys handle adding storage? I have two 2TB drives now (and since they are mirrored, an effective storage pool of 2TB). I expect that will last another year and a half, but then I'd like to pick up some 3TB drives for a storage pool of 5TB.

Eventually I'll probably also subscribe to an online backup service to protect against a house fire or something. Right now I want to focus on streamlining my backups now.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.