Hey, I was wondering if there was a way to use Time Machine to automatically back up wirelessly to a hard drive that was connected to a Windows 7 computer. I have a Macbook pro running Mountain Lion and would rather it backup wirelessly and automatically rather than having to always plug in my external hard drive. Is there anyway to back up to a Windows share, or an external hard drive that is connected to my Windows pc? What are my options?
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Windows hard drive as a time capsule
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Your best option is forget windows and get a NAS. Then follow the blog post Configuring OS X Mountain Lion Time Machine to Work With CIFS (SMB) Share and do it that way instead.
First be warned the compared to a direct attached disk a wireless disk is S-L-O-W. But if not much chances every hour then you don't care about speed. But dong the first backup over the air can take many hours or even a full day.
You can do it. But you'd first need software on the PC share the disk using the protocol that your Mac likes -- The file system must support "links".
The best thing to do is reformat the Windows system to run either Linux or BSD Unix. then you can have a much nicer "NAS" made from old PC parts. Google "FreeNAS", it is a very good use for old Windows PCs