using subversion as a workstation backup mechanism

Greetings,

I'm working at a company where the backup of critical user files on their (primarily WindowsXP) workstations is greatly lacking.

I'm thinking of using subversion as a backup mechansim in the following way:
  - we already have a network server (which is IT blessed) with a network share for each user mapped to say 'P:', and its contents are backed up nightly
  - from each workstation, create a svn repository in P:\backup
  - create directories in that repository and sync them to directories on the workstation to backup: ie: c:\documents and settings\$user\my documents\
  - automate a script that runs nightly (via task scheduler) on the user workstation that does the following:
    - svn add all new files
    - svn del all missing files
    - svn commit

Does anyone see any issues with this? I've used subversion for quite some time on source-code, but never against something as general as the contents of say 'My Documents' on a windows workstation. I've already written the dos batch file that performs the backups and creates the repository when run for the first time. I have the following questions:
  - is there any downside to using file:// vs http:// in the situation I've described
  - have other people implemented automated backup mechanisms using this concept
  - what windows apps other than 'outlook' have people run into problems with using this mechanism? (Outlook locks its 'pst' files from being read while its running, therefore I would assume the nightly backup would need to kill outlook before it does its thing)

Thanks for any feedback,

Tim
Received on Mon Mar 13 22:14:51 2006