Time Machine to a windows computer across internet?

Hi all,

I am planning on purchasing the new MB or MBP when released on October 14th.
I will be in college next year, and I was wondering if there was a way to get Time Machine to backup to the windows computer at my house while I am living on campus. I have no problem purchasing a FireWire external drive for Time Machine...but before I do I'd like to see the alternatives. Bringing an external HD to college might mean bad news...they are very portable, aka very stealable.

So do I have a shot with backing up from Mac @ college to windows machine @ home, or should I just buy an external HD?

 

I think this http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html pretty much says it all. Pay particular attention to "Pick a disk. Any disk."

Maybe someone has done a 'hack' but your first initial back up will take FOREVER.

 

thats what i'm afraid of...it taking forever and then not working when i need it.
i think ill just get the external drive...and risk taking it to college.
any recommendations on external drives? i was thinking about the WD 250GB My Passport. (here). cheap, well reviewed, good brand name, no external power needed. anyone use this drive, or recommend another? also am considering WD 500GB (here)

how much backup space do you guys reccomend for use with time machine?

 

People, me included, will usually recommend 150% to 200% of your internal drive size. More accurately I would say it should hold 200% of the data you will actually have, but since that changes I would go off of drive size.

The above should be a good rule of thumb unless you have a lot of very large, frequently modified files, like VM images. If you do you might need bigger or to not back them up as the whole file will be copied over every time it the file is changed, eating up your TM disk space.

 

200% sounds good.
i have 45GB of movies, and 30GB of music, so i definitely want that backed up thru time machine. the feature that it only backs up changed files is awesome.