PC and Mac serever help?

[qwerty]

ok i have my big gaming rig that i use but then there is my parents imacs. i was wondering will windows home server 2012 allow me to use time machine to backup to the server? if not, what would be the alternate best?

Thanks in advance!

[iain]

well you could just setup a smb share then point time machine to it you don't need a server os you could do it with xp

[dharmadrummer]

I would use a Linux based server because it is free and runs on most equipment. The only thing I am unsure about is if you can format a hard drive partition in Linux to something Mac OS can use.

[douchecanoe]

I would use a Linux based server because it is free and runs on most equipment. The only thing I am unsure about is if you can format a hard drive partition in Linux to something Mac OS can use.

OSX can use NTFS drives

However if it's stored on the network I don't even think the drive filesystem matters

[douchecanoe]

If you must use Windows Server check out this Instructable, it will tell you how to set up Samba shares on a Mac and backup

Samba is the file sharing system integrated into Windows and is supported on basically every operating system

However, if hosting any server I would use an appropriate OS (Windows Server is eehhhhh) like CentOS or RHEL

Perhaps you might also be interested in Crashplan, it's a great backup utility that does progressive automatic backups locally and on the network, and has a ton of great features