What's the closest thing to Time Machine (Mac) on Windows?

Marcos · 12 Jan 2014 at 13:51

For my purposes Time Machine is just perfect, I set it up for all Mac using friends and never get any problems.

BUT, every now and then I get asked if there is Time Machine for Windows.

I'd love to find something to whole-heartedly recommend that won't cause them any grief and is super slick to set up but I've never found something that really does it.

What is the best "*Complete* backup for Non-techies" on Windows? Does it even exist?

Burnsy2023 · 12 Jan 2014 at 14:02

A combination of Windows Shadow Copies and Windows backup is a pretty reliable solution. Backup does the full image backup and shadow copies helps against the odd corrupt file.

Destination · 12 Jan 2014 at 17:06

Yes windows backup is fully functional, can take system images, can just backup important files, and can do incremental updates.

Marcos · 12 Jan 2014 at 23:37

Interesting, so they've improved it quite a bit? Sounds good

What about, the recovery process? Is that straight forward? And then the big question, can you recover one fo these backups to a different system? E.g a laptop's backup recovered to a Desktop tower?

EDIT: Ohhhh...wait a second, you guys aren't talking about Windows 8 are you? I've vowed to never touch it

Raumarik · 12 Jan 2014 at 23:42

If you're on Windows 7 it's still good and TBH Windows 8 and 8.1 are fine, the whole "we don't like windows 8" bandwagon was 2012

lsg1r · 13 Jan 2014 at 00:14

Personally I use Bvckup (v2 beta currently) and this does 'real time' backups to another location (another drive), admittedly it's not a shadow copy but it's another option to consider

bledd · 13 Jan 2014 at 02:11

This looks like what you're after..

http://www.horizondatasys.com/en/products_and_solutions.aspx?ProductId=1

KIA · 13 Jan 2014 at 12:21

Marcos said:
EDIT: Ohhhh...wait a second, you guys aren't talking about Windows 8 are you? I've vowed to never touch it

8: http://arstechnica.com/information-...en-backup-to-clone-and-recover-your-whole-pc/
8.1: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/what-happened-to-backup-restore

theheyes · 13 Jan 2014 at 18:21

Windows image backup is great and will restore to different hardware (with some caveats)

Windows 8.x has File History which works a lot like Time Machine. Just set and forget, and it works with encrypted drives too.

Sin_Chase · 13 Jan 2014 at 18:25

I use Windows File history for documents and important files.

I image my OS once once I am happy with it. Apps can be reinstalled, I don't back them up.

Marcos · 25 May 2014 at 00:11

bledd. said:
This looks like what you're after..

http://www.horizondatasys.com/en/products_and_solutions.aspx?ProductId=1

I think this is the closest thing. I don't know how much I trust that it will actually do what they claim. That's another story.

mightymouse · 25 May 2014 at 15:08

not really for the system files but i use synctoy and you can use windows task manager to auto backup

Caged · 25 May 2014 at 16:43

There's not, as far as I'm aware, really anything that covers the bare-metal restore that Time Machine offers, combined with the continuous file protection. The closest is probably something like CrashPlan backing up to another PC / NAS running the server software.

nightmare99 · 26 May 2014 at 15:11

As already mentioned its file history + system image.