[Ilugc] (ab)using SVN/mercurial/other for general file backup

[Raja Subramanian]

Hi,

I'm looking for a system to backup my office data -- binary files (mostly
MS Office documents, pdf, etc) spread over a dozen or so Windows desktops.
I have ~5GB of data in total.  Unlike source code, my users rarely modify
existing files in my dataset, and it grows whenever new files are added to it.

I've been planning on setting up a central SVN repository off-site so that
my users can commit their changes daily, and thus do their own backups.
And something like TortiseSVN should ease the end user experience.

I see lots of benefits in using SVN -- multiple file revisions, off-site backup,
reduced bandwidth usage, etc.  But I've never tried svn for large repos
holding binary files.

Has anyone (ab)used their SVN repositories like this and offer any
insights?

Any idea if mercurial or other will work better for my requirement?

TIA,

- Raja