I am completely new to backing up files in linux. I have a home server (running Clarkconnect 4.0) with 40 GB of pictures and mp3s that I would like to backup onto a removable USB HD. Clarkconnect comes with bacula, but I am finding it too difficult to configure and suspect it might be overkill.

What is the best way to back-up my files (including incrementally on a weekly basis)? What file system should my USB HD use? (vfat, ext3 etc..). I am also nervous about recovery; it should be easy to recover backed up files!

You might consider using tar, rsync or pax. For the filesystem on your disk, you could probably use either fat32, vfat, or ext3 - it's your decision.
Good luck.

Vfat is the linux filesystem that a win32 partition is mounted as. You also might consider using dar and perhaps kdar. However if you use Linux ACL's you need to use "star" rather than "tar". I don't know if dar works with them. Dar has a kde gui front end called kdar. You can also export the script commands that perform a backup after setting it up graphically in kdar. This allows you to use cron to perform automatic updates.

One advantage of dar when performing restores, is that if a file is obsolete and deleted between incremental backups, the restore process will delete it as well. So if you start by restoring from an initial full backup, and then apply the incremental restores, you won't end up with a bunch of files that you don't want restored.

It can't be something that requires a GUI as the server has no x-server or desktop environment on it. It will have to be administered via ssh from one of my client computers.

Of the backup programs mentioned (and if I choose vfat/fat32 as my backup filesystem) are any of the archives viewable or extractable on a windows system? This would give me more of a "warm and fuzzy" that I could extract them if I didn't have a linux system available.

Do you need them to be compressed in any way or just copied as is? If you can copy them as is, then go with rsync. Rsync will only copy over changes. That way you save time and resources when performing your weekly backup. If the partition is formatted as FAT32, then it should be accessible in Windows.

I tried rsync and liked it. The only problem I found was syncing between a linux filesystem and FAT32. Occasionally linux file permissions could not be tranferred to FAT32, leading to rsync giving "chown" errors. I ended up using ext3 as there is freeware available (free as in beer) to read ext3 from Windows XP.