XigmaNAS

I used to run Windows Home Server -- which I really liked -- but I'm ready to move on to something more streamlined.

The nice thing about WHS was that it included software to install on your Windows client to run your backups and setup your server shares. It was very handy. Setting up SAMBA on a *nix machine is always misery. Truth is it was also kind of painful on WHS, but not so much.

But meanwhile, I'm stuck with no backup software on my client Windows 7. I know more advanced editions have a backup system that allows a networked share, but I only have Home Premium.

I also have a little SME server which used to back up to the WHS server. I am now using NAS4Free to do that. I see that my SME server uses DAR and so I thought I'd give DAR for Windows a try. I also see Cobian Backup has a GUI interface.

Does anyone have any recommended strategies for software to backup a Windows client to a NAS4Free CIFS/SMB share?

Are you looking for bare-metal restore or just file recovery?

I personally haven't tried it, but I have heard lots of good things about AOMEI Backupper http://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html it does file and bare-metal and supports shares as destination.

Also heard good things about Fbackup http://www.fbackup.com/ but it is file only backup. Also appears to only supported mapped drives so you could use the NAS it would just have to remain mapped.

I use Acronis Tre Image 2013 with Plus Pack.

I use allwaysync to backup data files on an ongoing basis and Paragon Hd manager to backup the system partition on a nightly basis.

Rsync copies files from the main server to a second backup server on a nightly basis.

I am using open source software FreeFileSync, working like a charm

Those are lot's of good tips, thanks all. I am looking for a systems (bare-metal) restore, this is what Windows seems to promise with its own backup system. But also a file backup is the least I could do. I am unfamiliar with file syncing.

I'll study these solutions and report back.

Any others?

Acronis Tre Image and Paragon HD are both Acronis products and they are not free.

AOMEI Backupper has a freeware version that will do system backups as well as a PXE boot, which looks interesting.

Features can be seen here:

http://www.backup-utility.com/edition-comparison.html

Clonezilla is another image type backup tool.

Macrium Reflect is very nice.

I am doing backup solution through Ahsay Software. Ahsay is a robust cross- platform backup solution which allows businesses and managed backup service provider to backup virtual machines, We can run virtualized backup server in the public cloud such as Amazon S3 so that we don't need to maintain any server and storage hardware. So try it one time.

@nas4fpksky so what did you finally go with?