Network Backups on Windows

Alright, so, I work in a lab with four or five computers all that have lots of pretty important experimental data which can't really be replicated and I feel like nobody backs it up often enough if there's ever another crash (we already had one drive which contained the custom written software specially written for our half a million dollar sputtering system die) and I don't want another repeat of that.

So, I'm looking to have all the computers in my lab automatically back up specified folders onto this giant drive I put into my office computer. Preferably there'd be some way to only copy over new files or ones which have been modified since the last backup, but if that's way more complicated then it's not a huge deal. All computers are running Windows XP Professional (there may be one with Home, I'm not too sure since I don't use it).

I don't mind having to dig through shitloads of Windows settings, though I'm also open to very reliable freeware or even software that needs to be purchased (don't want to pirate it since this is kinda Official Business).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Is there a way to set that up to go off, say, every Wednesday night?

Also, do you think the /d:date command could be dynamically done such that it only backs up files made in the past month or so?

Also, "WARNING: Long file names are not retained in MS-DOS mode." worries me since many of our filenames are pretty long. Standard format is usually something like "composition_month_day_year_numberOfRun_conditions _initialsOfWhoDidIt_anythingElse.whatever" so we really need to retain more than the 7-8 or whatever DOS lets you have.


Edit: It look like the built-in Windows Backup utility has most of what I want (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._03july14.mspx) including an Incremental Backup setting, but it saves the whole thing as a .bak file instead of just copying the entire directory structure and whatnot.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Anyone else here have ideas? I thought we had a bunch of IT networking people on the boards.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.