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I need a backup solution that can connect to computers on the domain and backup specific foleders, such as the C:\Users\ folder.

I need a solution that is agentless so that we don't need to install software and configure it on every single machine.

Are there any good suggestions for this? I'm open to considering both open source and propriety software.

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    Welcome to Super User! In Super User, and all the StackExchange sites, shopping or product recommendations are considered off topic and open ended, and sometimes even too localized. Try to reword your question in a way that you are not asking for products, but more of processes; this will help keep it on topic. Having said that, when dealing with enterprise products or scenarios, ServerFault would be the better fix
    – Canadian Luke
    Sep 10, 2012 at 18:49
  • how many machines are you looking to back up?
    – Keltari
    Sep 10, 2012 at 19:17
  • Wow, too many things happened at work and I forgot to get back to this. I'm looking to back up about 20 machines. The issue here, the thing that sparked this need is that recently there have been some terminated employees that out of spite have erased all of their project files which left the department up the creek. Now I understand I can run recovery tools, which I have, but we need a faster, proactive solution against this.
    – Chris
    Sep 13, 2012 at 16:33

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If the users are in a domain and the backup needs to be agentless, you could run a logoff script when they log off that will copy the files to a share.

@echo off

xcopy /e /y /i "%homepath%\Favorites" "\\server\share\%computername%_backups\favorites"
xcopy /e /y /i "%appdata%\microsoft\signatures" "\\server\share\%computername%_backups\signatures"
xcopy /e /y /i "%appdata%\microsoft\templates" "\\server\share\%computername%_backups\templates"
xcopy /e /y /i "%appdata%\mozilla\firefox" "\\server\share\%computername%_backups\mozilla\firefox"

This is a quick and dirty batch file that you can run when a user logs off that will copy their IE favourites, signatures, templates and Firefox bookmarks to a share. This script will create a folder called COMPUTERNAME_backups and embed the folders within it.

Just note that with this method the user will need to have write access to the folder, so I would recommend backing it up to a file server that is backed up regularly in case someone should find the share and tamper with it.

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  • Hi, thanks for the reply. I've considered something similar, but that doesn't offer any kind of differential or incremental type backup. I would like to not have to backup a few gigs each time the user logs off. Basically the problem I'm trying to prevent is users accidentally/deliberately deleting files. As in a terminated employee deleting their files. We've had that happen twice in the last month. Also, I've only recently become the lead in IT, so now I would like to prevent anything like this happening again.
    – Chris
    Sep 13, 2012 at 16:36
  • As a side note Chris I would advise terminating employees away from their desks and approaching HR so you guys can work together on that stuff. Nobody likes to see a fellow employee go but it's a process that needs to be well orchestrated. Aside from that I'm not sure there is such a thing as an agentless backup without virtualization.
    – DKNUCKLES
    Sep 13, 2012 at 18:41

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