Time machine onto pc server over network?

I have 1 pc desktop server, 1 external usb 2.0 hard drive and want to figure out a backup method for my macbook pro. (Also, I have a backblaze account for offsite backups running on the desktop.)

Can I make time machine backup to my pc server if it is in NTFS? Or do I need to plug in my ext hard drive formated in HFS+ into the server and then share it? Or am I better off just letting my mac take over the external hard drive and letting the desktop only backup remotely to backblaze?

This is what they are currently used for:

PC Laptop - Has my business data.
Desktop - itunes content for apple tv, pictures, manual pc laptop backups
usb hard drive - manual local desktop backup
backblaze - automatic desktop backup offsite (since usb drive is plugged into desktop, and backblaze is on desktop, it backs up both the desktop and the usb drive.)
Macbook pro - will replace PC laptop. Want to use time machine some how.

Thanks!

 

from the link...
Mac 101: Time Machine

I'm not sure you can do what you want to do.

Over the network, a computer doesn't care what file format a hard drive is, it never accesses it directly, it just talks using something like AFP or SMB to the other computer and the other computer takes care of accessing the disk. Windows pretty much only uses SMB... while Mac OS X can use SMB, according to that link Time Machine must have a AFP capable computer its talking to.

 

Someone just told me that they do not recommend putting time machine on a network drive because its harder to do a restore over the network. They said I could split the external disk into 2 parts, and use one for time machine, and use one for ntfs to hold my local pc files.

 

that will work

for external and extra drives like that... you should not use NTFS. Use ExFAT for data partitions on external drives, because that way Windows and Mac OS X can both easily read/write to it.

 

Is ExFAT natively read and writeable in all versions of windows, or is it pretty much a windows 7 thing?

I do happen to have windows 7 on all of my machines though so I don't guess it matters too much...

The guy said I need to install that NTFS driver anyway on the mac because I will probably end up needing to read thumb drives that are formated that way from others.

 

Windows XP has an update that adds support.. was somewhere between SP2 and SP3... but a fully updated Windows XP and later can use ExFAT.

ExFAT should be all anyone uses, and many thumb drives already come preformatted in ExFAT. Mac OS X by default can read NTFS, just not write to it without 3rd party software.

 

Do you lose anything worthwhile going to exfat over ntfs?

 

not that I know of. NTFS is really only useful for a boot/OS partition. Just like on Mac OS X, you need to use HFS+ for a boot/OS partition.

I think that Time Machine cannot backup ExFAT... I think it only backs up HFS... and ExFat support on Macs is 10.6+, so no older or PPC systems.

ExFAT was made by Microsoft, and as far as I know has no issues on Windows at all. It is the replacement for Fat32 that doesn't have all the drawbacks fat32 had like file sizes and stuff.

Check out all the Info MS put up about ExFAT here...
Description of the exFAT file system driver update package

 

Here ya go:

How to Use Time Machine Backups on Windows Home Server (or Any Networked Storage)

I did this with my Windows Home Server... Works a treat!