Home server OS

it's actually very simple in windows.
forgive me if i ramble a bit, i was drinking a bit tonight, and i'm about to turn in for the night.

1) when all your pcs are on the same router/network (say on your home wifi) they'll all be part of the same subnet, which means they'll all be "discoverable" by each other, all you need to do is jump into the network folder on a windows 7/8 machine, on the top "bar" there will be a prompt to turn on network discovery. click yes for every pc on your home network.

2) now you can see all the pcs. this is where it can get a little complicated... it's actually pretty simple if you understand domains and mapped drives, otherwise this will be basically new to you. on the pc you want to back up to, create a folder on the drive you want to back up to called Network Backup (frankly you can call it anything). then create folders inside that folder for each pc you want to backup to the one machine. such as PC_1 Backup, PC_2 Backup (again, it doesn't really matter what you name all this, only it's good form to make it easy to understand so 3 years from now if for some reason you need to look at it again you can reason out what you did, the easiest way to do that is put everything in a folder that describes what is in it)

3) now right click on the main folder "Network Backup", and SHARE the folder with "everyone"

4) now you're going to log into each pc on your network you plan to backup to the "server" and when you're in the computer menu "map a network drive" (you're doing this for a couple of reasons, the least of which is to always keep your computers logged into the pc fileserver)
this is where it might get a little complex... see network addresses work like this
"\\[PC NAME]\folder name\, so for example, if i shared out Network Backup to "everyone", and network backup was located on "D" drive, on my pc named "pc_fileserver", and i created individual backup folders for each pc on my network and the pc i am starting with is pc1 the network address would be \\pc_fileserver\network backup\pc1_backup, chose whatever drive letter you want. i usually leave it as z: unless i have a reason to chose something else

5) at this point if you entered a valid network location windows will prompt you for login credentials... you need to use the credentials for the pc_fileserver. I sugest you create a login ID on pc_fileserver with admin access, make it a general login, like "PC_BACKUP ADMIN" with a general password which you'll never forget. now this is the real trick you MUST remember.
you see you can't just put into login name "PC_BACKUP ADMIN", because windows thinks your credentials are for your CURRENT PC. (since these credentials are being called onto another pc, you must tell windows those credentials are for another pc). How do we do this? the default "domain" in windows is "workgroup" assuming you don't have windows ultimate or professional you'll never be able to play with domains... assuming you didn't rename your "workgroup" on your pc fileserver, (you can check this in control pannel - > system, it will list whatever domain or workgroup it's part of)... so again, assuming you kept everything "default" it will read "workgroup" for the workgroup... so your login credentials will be

Username: workgroup\PC_BACKUP ADMIN
Password: (whatever password you have for that login)

now assuming you did this right, you'll have mapped the "backup" location as a "network drive" on your pc.

6) now you'll go into windows backup.
-setup windows backup is very simple, default settings will backup pretty much everything of consequence
-there may be an option to backup a system image, chose to backup the system image, this will allow you to restore your system from the image if windows gets corrupted.
-chose the destination folder as the netork drive location
It might ask you for access credentials, enter them as you entered them when mapping the network drive

and you're done.

If you have any questions about this you can ask me anytime. i'll walk you through it.
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