backup & low downtime for home network

[Chris Aitken]

I want to have a backup system for our home network. We have four PCs 
(I'm going to call them PCs here to mean they are linux computers as 
opposed to MACs - I don't mean PC as in a Microsoft computer). cpc is my 
multimedia (emu1212m soundcard, printer is attached, DVD burner, 
audacity) and production machine for my guitar lessons business. ppc is 
the administrative computer (spreadsheets, documents, artwork) for the 
business. dpc is my daughter's machine which has our first non-rpm-based 
distro (ubuntu) - that's the machine I'll be setting up to use gtkpod 
with the 3rd gen. iPod video nano. bpc is my son's computer - he doesn't 
do much with it right now (just homework).

cpc: 20 GB master hard drive (that just died) and 10 GB slave hard drive 
(I keep .ogg's on it), 384 MB RAM, PIII 733 MHz

ppc: 20 GB master hard drive and 6 GB slave hard drive (for backups), 
256 MB RAM, AMD Duron 800 MHz

dpc: 13.5 GB hard drive, 256 MB RAM, PIII 733 MHz

bpc: 13.5 GB hard drive, 256 MB RAM, PIII 733 MHz

My two goals are 1. backup, and 2. low down-time when a hard drive goes. 
For instance, this hard drive crash I lost some data (not much because I 
do backups, but some), and my production machine will be down for a 
while because I have to install so much software (OS, apps, printer, 
netwrok printing).

I just bought two identical 160 GB WD hard drives. So, I could set up 
software RAID 1 as Lennart suggested - it would be the first time doing 
this. How much slower will my computer really be due to the mirror? Will 
I take a hit, say, when recording in audacity? Are RAID 1 cards cheap? 
Would that give me hardware RAID and would the performace gain be worth 
the effort? Are there any other solutions you guys suggest looking at 
given the machines I have and all the hard drivves on them that coulkd 
be redistributed? the only hard drive that is married to a machine is 
the 20 GB hard drive on ppc (it's working real good for what my wife 
needs so I don't want to mess with it - anything else is possible, though...

Chris
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