USB HDD & Windows 2000 Server

[JiGG]

Is it possible to do the following and what if?????

1. Attach a USB HDD to a box running Windows 2000 Server and use that USB HDD as a second partition to store information and use as a backup for WINXP boxes?

2. If so, I'd assume I'd format as NTFS. If I apply certain rights to certain directories for individual users will I have any problems?

3. If I swap this drive onto another machine, will I have problems accessing the data that has NTFS rights applied to it?

4. If my 2000 box dies, will I loss the chance of ever retrieving the data that is stored on my NTFS partition?

I plan on partitioning the USB HDD as 1/2 NTFS and the other as FAT32.

What do you think? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mairving]

Get a tape backup and some good software with it, either Retrospect or Veritas Backup-Exec. The USB solution would work on a temp basis but would not be a good long-term one since it would be hard to automate it. This means that you would have to be there to copy the files. You couldn't do it while users were using it since it would corrupt any open files.