AIT - VXA - or NAS??

[jethro]

HI,

 

We are looking into a backup solution for our office. We have a small network of 4 newer Macs in a peer-to-peer situation currently. We do graphic design and therefore have pretty large files. We are currently using Mac OS 9, but will be soon upgrading everyone to OSX v10.2.

 

 

 

We were originally looking into tape drives, with the firewire VXA-1 drive from Exabyte and the firewire AIT-1 drive from LaCie being the top contenders. Both seem to have very similar specs/performance/cost. When asking around, most people leaned heavily toward AIT as being around longer, more supported, and much more popular. We are concerned about a proprietary system from one smaller company being around very long with all the financial woes in this industry. Any advice or experience using either on OSX?

 

 

 

And recently I just started looking into a Network Attached Storage device for backup. Possibly using 2 or 3 hard drives in a RAID array for safety. This would appear to be a much faster/larger system that could also handle some file serving without having to get a full-blown server. Anyone have any experience using one with OSX and Retrospect??

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice/help. I searched on the website here, but was unable to get very specific detailed answers. I couldn't find anything about NAS, though a salesman told me they are definitely supported.