Here’s my backup scheme:
1) mirrored 1.5 GB hard drives for server
2) all user laptops and workstations have sync of important user file folders to the network server.
3) once a week, I open the side of the server and swap out one of the mirrored drives to one recently initialized.
4) removed drive is stored in a firesafe and the server re-mirrors itself back to the fresh drive.
Hot swapping the drive takes all of 3 or 4 minutes.
The server is nothing more than a used 4 year old Dell Precision 490 running 64-bit Vista that I got for $225.
> 1) mirrored 1.5 GB hard drives for server
That should read 1.5TB SATA hard drive for server.
also,
As for encryption, I use TruCrypt for everything.