My first question is exactly what do you need to backup?
Do you need to backup the entire machine for disaster recovery (including Windows OS files)?
Do you need to backup critical DATA files and not OS files?
If you need to backup only DATA files, are those files located in specific folders (which means you really need to make backup copies of specific folders)?
There are numerous FREE Microsoft solutions. If you simply want local machine folders to stay synchronized with (exact copy of contents) a network drive location then SyncToy is simple to use and Robocopy.exe is super fast (but it does require a little scripting to tell it exactly what you want it to do which keeps most people from using it).
If you want archival type backups that create a seperate backup each time it is performed then NTBackup will do the job. In the UI you select what to backup, the type of backup (full, incremental, etc.) and the destination of the backup. It has a "Scheduled Job" tab that allows you to make your backup a job in Windows Scheduled Tasks. You can create multiple jobs such as a Full backup on a certain week day and incremental backups on other week days. You have to give the jobs a user account to run under and if it is an account other than who is actually logged in then the user won't even see the backup taking place although they naturally will notice disk activity and reduced performance while the backup is running. If you wanted to get creative you could launch the job from a logoff or shutdown script, meaning when the user does a system shutdown backup would run and then the system would shutdown.
The possibilities are virtually endless. I use Visual Basic Scripts to control NTBackup to backup 3 servers and Exchange. I perform full and incremental backups. I use VBS and Robocopy.exe to copy my most recent backups to a removable USB drive every Monday morning for off-site storage. I use VBS and Robocopy.exe for a workstation logoff script that makes a network location a mirror image of local data folders such as My Documents, Desktop, any application specific data storage folders, etc. (It can also be launched by the user at any time by a cute desktop shortcut). It typically takes 10 seconds or less to run.
I'd be happy to provide you with the whole workstation Robocopy setup. There's a single text file in which you specify what local folders you want mirrored and the path to the mirror location (can use drive letter or UNC path). It's "profile specific". First, the config text file must be in the user's profile root folder ("C:\Documents and Settings\jdoe\" for example) before it will run. At the destination you specify it creates (first time only) this folder structure: \\\. Under the computer name folder is all the folders you specify to be backed up. This structure allows a user to backup their data from multiple computers and keep the backups seperated.
It takes about 2 minutes to set this up on a computer (per user). Copy a folder to \Program Files\, copy a shortcut to the desktop, copy the config text file to the user's profile folder and edit it with the path to the backup location and any non-standard local folders to be backup up (already configured with My Documents, Desktop, and Favorites).
