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Amanda -- A beautiful name, plus solid network backups

Unlike other backup solutions, this one is one of the undisputed leaders, as it has both the option for pro-level support, while remaining an open source application. One of the biggest attractions to using Amanda is the fact that the application is able to backup pretty much anything, on a schedule, to just about anything. Disk storage, tape drives, and doing so over your network on the schedule you set.

Regarding backing up to tape and disk -- Amanda can do this simultaneously! Another giant advantage despite my dislike for taking a Tar backup approach is that Amanda does this as to protect you should you need to get that data without relying on any special software. Just untar it. Amanda is also created with higher quality code than most consumer-level applications, and its encryption ensures that data in transit is protected from prying eyes.

Downsides? Honestly the only one I can think of is the fact that this is not really a solution for anything less than a small-business-sized operation. This is not really that home user friendly. Still, it is worth pointing out that Tar, listed above, can provide some of the most basic Amanda functionality for a home user, without the little niceties and can be made secure with the implementation of SSH for network travel. Still, both Tar and Amanda are just overkill for most home users.

Sbackup -- Just keep it simple

Definitely not the most elegant-looking backup option available today, sbackup does, however, do the job it is tasked with nicely despite any issues with its appearance. Works great with any external hard drive or USB flash device, backups can easily be scheduled to meet the needs of any users, regardless of the schedule they might keep.

Setting up automatic backups, however, if being done with an external USB device, is best suited for PCs that are left on all of the time. In some cases, there is an issue with some distributions of Linux that a new phantom folder of what was once the symlink for the backup drive will be used instead of the new symlink for the current placement of the external drive. This can be a problem.

Bad stuff aside, this is a great way to do /home folder backups in a bind and do them cleanly. Just remember to be aware of the external drive issue.

CrashPlan -- A closed-source prince worth the price

CrashPlan comes in two flavors -- home user and enterprise grade. In this instance, my experience is with the home version. Why even highlight this? Because it is like sbackup with off-site network backup capabilities for a one time fee. Yes, the only time you need to worry about paying for anything after that is if you are looking for continuous backups vs scheduled or for CrashPlan provided data storage offsite. Honestly, considering the ability to store offsite without any fees on one of my own PCs, anywhere in the world, I see little reason to concern myself with any additional fees.

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