Backing-up Windows 7 to a NAS?

[MajorFubar]

There's four computers in this house: one iMac (mine), two Mac Minis (one used as a media server with the HiFi/TV, one in the boys' bedroom) and a HP laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium (Mrs Fubar's). The three Macs back up to a partition on my NAS drive via their respective Time Machines. Thought I'd try to get Mrs Fubar's laptop to do the same thing using Windows Backup and Restore, which I remember did work reasonably well in XP years ago when I had my old HP laptop and a home-brewed 80GB NAS. But lo and behold, I can't believe it (though perhaps I shouldn't be surprised), Micro$oft have disabled network backups on the Home versions of their OS's. How absolutely pathetic is that.

So the long and the short of all this preamble is, can anyone recommend half-decent and cheap third-party software for Win 7 that does schedulable incremental backups?

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Many free options (google). How many of us have actually 'experience' of good backup software? Most will work but its only when disaster strikes that we can really judge. Which is why I trust techie reviews for this kinda thing.

 

[cheeseboy]

don't know if you've tried already, but try mapping the nas drive in windows so it gets a drive letter, that way the backup might just let you choose the drive letter and ignore the fact it's actually a networked drive.

 

[Xanderzdad]

Bvckup 2 is an amazingly fast and proficient 'file copier'. You can schedule it but it does not make archives in the same way as Windows Backup used to. It copies across all changed files and archives deleted ones (if you select that option).

http://bvckup2.com/

It's very easy to set up and ridiculously efficient at it's job. There is a trial version - might be worth a look.
I use it backup all 7 PC's in our hosue to a NAS.

 

[MajorFubar]

Thanks I'll have a look at that

don't know if you've tried already, but try mapping the nas drive in windows so it gets a drive letter, that way the backup might just let you choose the drive letter and ignore the fact it's actually a networked drive.

Yeah that was the first thing I tried when I saw that it wouldn't look on the network. But it's way too smart for sneaky workarounds like that.

I don't even know why they've done this to start with. Unless it has something to do with all those unsporting enterprise users who bought XP Home OS's for their business instead of the Enterprise/Pro versions at a premium. 'All the enterprise users need network backup so let's knock that on the head for starters'. But even that's a weird way to look at it because most enterprise users will be saving their data to a server somewhere anyhow and storing very little on the PC itself.

 

[AnotherJoe]

With windows 7 home - the trick is to create a virtual hard drive on your network. Backup will then see the virtual drive as a normal drive and let you back up to it.

http://www.overclockedtechies.com/2012/02/windows-7-home-premium-network-backup/