Backing Up Windows 7 To a Network Share

[Afasoas]

Hullo,


I thought it was about time I started backing up files on my laptop because I'm getting lazy with manually copying documents I've amended or created whilst away from home back over to the network when back at home.

Windows 7 Home Premium has built in backup facilities, but they are a little castrated because you can only backup to local media. That's fine if you want to backup to an external hard disk drive.

I know I'm too lazy to do that. So, I found a work around. Create a virtual hard disk that resides on the network share.
http://www.overclockedtechies.com/2012/02/windows-7-home-premium-network-backup/

Just sharing here because I figured a few of you might find it useful.

[Dibdib]

Thanks - that was just what I was looking for.

[Woofage]

My knowledge of windows is rather rusty, but can't you just use xcopy to backup to a mapped network drive? This can be saved in a script and then scheduled appropriately.

[Afasoas]

Yes.

But I am not sure whether incremental backups are still possible using xcopy just to copy files with the archive attribute set. There are quite a few articles around suggesting the archive attribute isn't getting reset.

I have yet to properly investigate it.

I still don't have the VHD working so we might be onto plan B or C with this anyway.

[Biggsy]

You don't need to use the Archive bit.  Just Xcopy or Robocopy changed files by date.  But these things can't compress the backups (iirc), so backup software can be useful for that and bells and whistles.

I use batch files for my data drives (so quick and simple) and Acronis True Image for my operating system partition.  That works with network drives, too, though it's not free.