Advice Windows Backup Software like Time Machine?

[TedTheDog]

I think the subject covers it pretty well but a little more detail.
My Step dad is completely computer illiterate yet is totally oblivious to this fact.

I'm his tech support but he bought an external USB2 drive and "backed up" his machine to this. All I found on the drive were Shortcuts back to the original folders.

As his machine had died by this point this caused no inconsiderable wailing and gnashing of teeth, as you can imagine.
Anyway, I've now recovered his Picture dir, all 80gb of it. He's an ex BBC cameraman (Tom Baker season of Dr Who was one of his) and he takes his digital photography as seriously as his advancing years allow.

So, I'm a mac user and Time Machine would be perfect for him but a new mac is out of his price range. Especially when he's a legit user of Photoshop and already has a Win version. Adobe dont do a "switch OS's for a small fee" deal and I cant face running Win7 in a VM on an octogenarians PC.
So new PC it is and I want Time Machine on his new PC!

Any ideas?

 

[soze]

If he has Windows 7 you can go to Control Panel and Backup and Restore. Set it up to run a full backup and you can also create a System Repair disc. If it all goes wrong you just reference the backup while reinstalling Windows and you go back to that date and time. I have never run it on 7 but i have a few times on Server 2008 and it really is excellent.

 

[MYstIC G]

Windows 7 backup is gash unless you have Pro/Ultimate because it won't let you do so many things, e.g. pick a network share as a location.

I use CrashPlan. It runs on Win/Mac/Linux and you can back up to local destinations, other peoples computers (i.e. you could run it and he could back up to your Mac when you weren't using it) or to their cloud service (for a fee obviously).

It's easy to set up and is self-updating and very "set it and forget it" fella. I've been using it on our family business stuff to back up our documents between offices it works over shitty ADSL links and e-mails me if ever the connection is lost and the backup hasn't been done for a few days. It's done from Windows Vista to a Ubuntu Server box and all the restore tests I've done have been fine.

 

[Access Denied]

I use Acronis True Image myself. Works like a charm.

 

[old.Osy]

I use Acronis True Image myself. Works like a charm.

Hear hear. Although, VSS and Windows backup work fine, if you knows how to use em.

 

[Tilda]

I did use Carbonite, really good online backup. its subscription based but once everything is uploaded it just monitors the folders you've selected and keeps them up-to-date online.

 

[SheepCow]

I use rsync off to my NAS for anything that isn't actually stored on the NAS in the first place. The Windows bit is "DeltaCopy", uses the built-in Task Scheduler to copy periodically.

rsync only synchronises though so if you delete something you can't get it back (in my arrangement my NAS will let me recover deleted goodies)