[TriLUG] Backup Win7 to Linux

[John Broome]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 7:53 PM, Steve Holton <sph0lt0n at gmail.com> wrote:

> Backups are always trivial. But unless you've tested the restore mechanism,
> you haven't really
> taken a backup.
>
> Ultimately, then, this is a problem about how to get Win7 to perform a
> proper restore.
> Perhaps target this question to another group?


Actually I think this is perfectly on-topic and an excellent use for linux.

I'm assuming that Brian isn't backing up the ENTIRE OS with plans to
restore THE ENTIRE OS, he's worried about My Documents-level stuff.

First, if this is going to end up in The Cloud, look and see if your The
Cloud provider has a windows client to handle your uploads.  I'm thinking
JungleDisk, BackBlaze, CrashPlan, and other CamelCase-named providers.

Second, you have two options: Push your windows stuff onto the linux
machine or pull it onto the linux machine.  If you're pushing, you can set
up a samba server on your linux machine, mount the share on windows and use
one of the many windows file-syncing programs to copy stuff over.  It has
been a while since I've admin'd windows boxes (and i've almost recovered),
so I'm not sure of exact names, but i know that's A Thing.

To pull, forgo the entire cygwin mess and just get what you need: rsyncd:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/backuppc/files/cygwin-rsyncd/3.0.9.0/   Set
up an rsyncd server on your winmachine and pull it to your linux machine
using something like rsnapshot or BackupPC.   (
http://gerwick.ucsd.edu/backuppc_manual/backuppc_winxp_cyg.html)

Or, share out what you want to backup using samba and pull from that onto
the linux machine. BackupPC can also use samba to pull backups onto a linux
machine.