Rob, if you guys are interested, I am willing to help backup off site. I have a 1TB external drive I could spare plenty of room.
Mike thanks for the offer I'll remember it.
Rob, when you backup off of the server, you using Putty (SSH)? I think that would be the fastest method from what I can see.
No it's an FTP program that you can schedule downloads/uploads with. You can use it like a regular FTP program but you can also automate it to run once, daily, weekly and monthly. I have it setup to run at 12:05am to start downloading the database backup file and the various attachments, avatars etc.
The actual backup is created by a linux program that runs before the FTP program. It is setup to run a daily, weekly and monthly backup and compress it (GZ). The backup stays on the site but the FTP program downloads any changes to the directories that I backup without downloading files that I already have. The db backups are not in the forum directory structure so they can't be found and looked at. From the information email that the program sends me it takes less then a minute to create the backup and FTP'ing takes less then a minute to download since its compressed.
For those that care the current forum backup is just short of 1.5 gigs in size with all of the attachments etc. The db backup is 40megs in size. I also back it up during the week to a memory stick. And I also got the automated backup working with the sata drive so now all I do is take the drive out of my gun safe hook it up to a usb connection and I can back it up onto the separate drive in a few minutes. So all in all there is a backup on the server, a backup on my computer, a backup on a memory stick and backup on a separate hard drive. Hopefully none of which we'll ever need.