Possible to make/move Time Machine backup on a Windows PC?

[Adamantoise]

I have a desktop computer running Windows 7.
I have a Macbook Pro running OS X.

Is it possible for me to make my Windows machine visible to my Macbook Pro (as an external drive) and then create a Time Machine backup somewhere on my Windows machine?

Right now, the only other option is to buy an external hard drive. I don't want to buy one just yet.

In layman terms, is it possible for me to enforce a 'Target Disk mode' in Windows 7. Where my Windows machine acts as an external hard drive.

I'd rather not do it over my internet as USB would be faster in my opinion.

 

[Detrius]

There are no PCs that support a target disk mode, so far as I'm aware. Additionally, USB doesn't support that kind of thing anyway; it's not a peer-to-peer protocol, which Firewire and Thunderbolt are. Even if this did work, your drive would have to be formatted HFS+, which it won't be.

You may be able to get an AFP server running, but that will be your only option.

 

[danpass]

interesting as I was wondering this EXACT thing myself earlier this evening as I have an external drive connected to the PC.

googling showed that the file format is not compatible

 

[Detrius]

googling showed that the file format is not compatible

The two possible destinations are either an HFS+ volume or an AFP server, which Windows does not provide. There are open-source implementations, and it's possible to get Time Machine to back up to an unsupported server (e.g. Linux). If you can get the AFP server to run on Windows, it should (in theory, anyway) work.