Backup to Another PC

WNCDude asked the Networking forum virtually backup up one computer to another over a local network.

What you suggest provides a fairish degree of safety. It also saves you money, since you don't have to buy an external drive or a subscription to a cloud-based backup divine service.

Simply IT's non a perfect solution. A burglar might steal much one computer, and a flaming could demolish all of them.

Another option is to keep all of your relevant data on one reckoner and access it on the others. You'll still have to backup that one computer, of course.

Either way, you'll need a folder on at to the lowest degree one calculator that the other PCs can not only access just write to. Here's one acicular way to set back this ahead (in that location are many):

Windows 7 and Vista: Right-click the folder you want to share and prize Properties. Get across the Sharing tab, then the Advanced Sharing clitoris. Fit Share the folder. Click the Permissions button. Check Full Hold in, Modification, and Take in the Reserve column.

XP: Right-click the folder you wishing to plowshare and select Properties. Click the Sharing tab. Train Share this folder on the network, then Allow network users to change my files.

You can now brawl a direct backup from unmatched Microcomputer to the shared folder on another. Approximately whatever backup program you pick out should be fit to handle this.

The other glide slope is to keep up every last of your documents (and possibly your medicine, photos, etcetera) on combined computer. Once again, this involves a shared folder that other people can pen to.

You can keep all of your documents on single computer simply by remembering to create and save your files on the network folder. But if you don't cartel your memory board (or your ability to make over new habits), you can tell Windows to use this remote location as your My Documents folder.

Yes, that works. But this suggestion comes with a serious caveat: If the other figurer is turned bump off or otherwise inaccessible when you're using yours, you're expiration to have problems.

If you want to plow ahead, here's how to set it upwards:

View, Windows 7: Clink Start, then your logon advert at the top of the Start menu's right column. Ethical-click Documents or My Documents, then select Properties. Click the Location tab. Click the Motivate push and select your network destination.

XP: Click Start, outside-click My Documents, and select Properties. On the Target tab, Click Move, and prize your network destination.

You might also require to consider syncing your files through an Internet-founded service like Dropbox. That will clear the "turned remove" job, and provide other stratum of stand-in.

My thanks to smax013, who provided some panoptic suggestions in the original assembly discussion.

Contributing Editor in chief Lincoln Spector writes about technology and cinema. Email your technical school questions to him at answer@pcworld.com , Oregon post them to a community of assistive folk on the PCW Answer Crease meeting place . Follow Lincoln connected Twitter .