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The server I want to backup is an NTFS file system.
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??? I thought you were running Linux!
Okay so here is the setup as best I know it. We have a unix terminal running Linux (I logged in and used the uname command to check) that is used as a data server. Users in the office, mostly on pcs but some on macs, can access the drive (through windows) by mapping a network drive under Tools in My Computer and signing in as a registered user. When one does that, the details section on the left info bar lists the name and the physical address, then "Network Drive", "File System: NTFS", and then the free space and total size. I can also access the network through Samba/SWAT, SecureCRT, and the physical terminal itself.
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So, what's your server actually doing? If you don't know, could you find out?
By doing, do you mean, what is it used for? If so, the department uses it to store research data. From what I understand, most users use it to backup data from their computers, but there may be some users who save data primarily or only to the server for personal or security reasons. The server has joint shared space, where anybody has read and copy privileges but only the author of a file has edit/delete rights. In addition, each registered user should have a personal space that only they see. To be quite honest I don't know much more beyond that, nor do I think does anyone else at this point. I quite accidentally stumbled onto this problem looking for a fix for something else (trying to make a public folder on the shared space that gave all users full privileges of any files placed there) and contacted a number of current and former employees to figure out what had been done in the past in terms of backups, and that appears to be nothing.
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It may be simpler, and faster to plug the drive into the server direct, mount it, and create the tarball on it that way. Assuming your Linux server can understand XFS.
So that would be simply plugging the drive into the server via USB, mounting (with code) and creating the tarball (more code)? How can I tell if my Linux server can understand XFS or not? The uname -a command gave more info, would that help? How long approximately would that take? and vs. say doing it through the udpcast as you suggested above?
When I do the backup do I need to prevent other activity on the server?
Thanks