Backing up 3 Win7 (Home Premium) laptops and 1 Win 8.1 laptop

[vdubbeet]

to a Seagate 5TB drive attached to the Linksys WRT1900AC router? Searched everywhere and can't find an answer. WE'd like to be able to let the backups automatically occur, if that's possible. Seagate's software leaves a lot to be desired and Win7 HP doesn't allow backups to a network drive 🙁 Any assistance you can provide would be most welcomed. Thanks much.

 

[USAFRet]

There are different things that need to be backed up, and you handle those differently.

OS
Applications
Your personal data

Can you give that drive a drive letter?

For the OS and applications:
CloneZilla or DriveimageXML. Save an 'image' to that network drive.
Repeat that monthly.

For your data:
I use SyncBack Free.
On the target drive, create a top level folder for each PC. PC1, PC2, etc
Create subfolders for whatever data files you want backed up
In the application, give it source and target folders, and a schedule. Every 6 hours, every 12 hours, whatever
It then copies over any new or changed files to that target space.

 

[vdubbeet]

USAFRet - thanks for your reply & your service to our country.

I do not know if I can assign a drive letter to the networked ext HD. It is attached via USB 3.0 to a Linksys WRT1900AC. I will try however, I attempted last weekend to no avail. If I'm able your solution seems very plausible. Thank you. Do you happen to know how I might be able to assign a drive letter to the networked drive? Thanks in advance.

 

[USAFRet]

How to assign a drive letter? Unknown on my part.

But the above scenario is exactly what I do here, although to another PC/shared folders. Not a drive attached directly to a router.