Can I use TC as a backup drive for a Windows PC

I bought a TC. We still have one desktop PC. I am hoping to use TC as a backup drive for that PC in addition to its wireless capabilities. Can I do that? Or, do I have to have an external hard drive hooked up to TC that is used to backup the PC?
Thanks!

Does TC have to be formatted in some special way in order to have the PC write to the drive?
No, the TC is a network drive.. its internal format happens to be HFS+ and cannot be changed, but it would not matter if it was formatted to some strange standard you never heard of. It presents to the network as an SMB files store.. that just means it is like a shared drive on another computer.
I prefer to simply reinstall the operating system & have the data files to restore in case something happens. At least, in my limited experience and others' stories, that seems to be a simpler route.
I disagree here. A full backup of terrible mess sure, that is worse than a bad fresh install. But a clone of the PC on the day of creation.. that is a very special backup.. and I store them for every pc I setup. Fortunately very few these days.. To install the OS, drivers, updates (these take forever plus several registrations to MS), antivirus, security software, basic software like office, register everything, ring microsoft to convince them you are reinstalling because you had to wipe the pc and are not stealing the software. Discover that the PC has no original disks because the supplier loaded it onto a partition on the hard disk which is now dead. Load emails.. those are painful..remember all your account names, account info, all the passwords all the favourites.. that takes a few days.
When you get a new pc, an unused full install.. everything registered.. everything working as it should.. take a clone snapshot.. and protect it like crazy. That snapshot will have your pc back in working condition in under 1 hour. What is more it will be small.. a few gigabyte at most.. you can probably fit the whole thing on a 8GB usb stick. Lock that away in a draw.. it is precious.. my precious.. get it with a nice ring on the end.. !!
There is a full working pc with all your software, fully registered without more effort than starting the restore. All shrunk down to an $10 storage device.
You can do the same thing after say 1 year.. the backup might no longer fit on a nice disk but you can get hard disks for very cheap. It also represents a working volume, all the current passwords, all the current favourites and setups. After that things tend to go downhill.. files and registry bloats out and viruses get in.. etc. But at least the day of creation backup is so so worth it.
So, maybe I can still use the MS Backup process I've been using and write to the TC as an "external hard drive" location for the backup file?
It will work.. much more cannot be said.
Wishing you a Happy New Year - wherever in the world you might be!
Australia.. !!
But same back to you.. with knobs on!!

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Welcome to Apple Discussions.
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Message was edited by: macjack

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http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11171
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telwell wrote:
Can I connect my Click Free portable hard drive backup to my Intel IMac running Lion, and use time machine and not the Click Free backup software? I'm guessing I might have to erase the software from the ClickFree drive. This ClickFree hard drive is for Mac as well as Windows.
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tokine wrote:
So my question is can I use my old exteral hard drive (Got it back in 2004 for University. Used with a PC) to back up my MacBook Pro with out running into any issues if I have to restore my Mac??
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Can I use TC as a backup drive for a Windows PC

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