Cheap backup system

[halve]

I am looking to back up a server that is running 3 73gb SCSI's in a RAID5 scenerio +1 hot spare. Normally this would not be a problem, but this server is offsite. I first specced out a similiar tape vault like the one we use in our main office. My manager did not like the price, so now I am looking for a cheap alternative. I was thinking somthing like building a low end machine and attaching 5 160gb drives in a ide chassis (if they make such a thing). I could then on each day of the week backup to a drive. So monday would be drive 1, tuesday drive 2 etc etc etc. Then on Sundays I could pull the data off one of the drives and throw it down to our main file server at our head office to be backed up by our big tape vault. Does this sound at all possible? Or should I tell my manager to suck it up and pay the money for a actual tape vault for this site?

If it is possible what will I need to get 6 ide drives running in a system. I have never tried anything like this with ide drives. I have several SCSI chassis running 15 drives a piece and was quite easy to setup, but do they make an IDE chassis? Obviously I will have my primary drive for the os and then how do I attach 5 drives to this machine for storage?

Thanks for all the help

Halve

 

[thorin]

All you need is a standard PC that can handle 6 drives which shouldn't be hard because you can purchase 3.5 > 5.25 conversion rails. Then you can put 4 drives on the internal controller (or 3 + 1 cdrom) and the other 2 (or 3) on a PCI IDE controller. Shouldn't be a big deal at all.

Thorin