wat that the majority of "backup" software didn't work as advertised.

Copies are not backups. While it's true that backups are essentially copies, though they're often compressed, what makes them more than copies is that they're part of a regular and rigorous regimen of such copies. What's also important is that they differ from the run-of-the-mill copy in that they're on media that the OS can't see, hence, can't mess up, whether by bug or by virus.

My "good stuff" lives on a system that is not, and has never been, networked. That way I'm sure it remains free of "critters" that may travel via the LAN or the WAN. If I want to move files to it from another system, they're moved via SCSI tape using a DOS-based utility that talks directly to the tape hardware. Yes, it's slow and tedious, (10 MB/min) but I've had no trouble with it so far. Windows can't hurt it, nor can a virus, unless there's one that specifically infects the tool set that's used to process the tapes.

I'm thinking it might be useful to have a LINUX box serve as a backup-server, running a task that "sees" new files in various directories, and backs them up to tape (using TAR) whenever they show up.

RE