Backup to Windows/NTFS drive.

[yawa]

I will be buying a macbook pro next week and was wondering what the best way to backup data was such as photos/mp3s/videos etc.

I have a PC in my office in my house which has ample space available and in which the HD's are raided so a bit more security than just a stand alone laptop HD.

What is the easiest way to back this data up through windows? does osx come with a tool to do it? or could i just make a simple cron job and mount the windows HD in fstab or something (im coming from a linux/unix background so im presuming the command window is just like a terminal windows in linux).

Cheers

 

[oculus42]

Works over SMB Share

I have used Time Machine over an SMB (Windows) Share, using iTimeMachine to enable me to select that disk.

I was able to back up and restore from it, but the catch is you cannot use such a network share for rebuilding a Mac during the install of Mac OS X. You would need to get an external drive and copy it there for system rebuild. Also, you may not be able to move the files with Windows, as Windows will allow a computer over SMB to create file paths that are longer than the Windows host can use. They can still be moved with a Mac, though.

Another option is use use a free iSCSI target on your Windows PC -- StarWind iSCSI has a free edition -- something I use for a virtual "local hard drive" for Aperture backups over my wireless. You'll need the GlobalSAN iSCSI Initiator or something like it to connect to the SAN target, but you can create a local disk image, even mount ISO files as CD/DVDs over iSCSI.