Hi there
@
cereberus
I think if you use any common version of Linux with SAMBA installed as your "Controlling OS" whether on a VM or not you should be able to schedule a backup to copy your relative's HDD('s).
Make the "C" HDD on the Windows disk as shared and on the Linux system you can use CRONTAB to schedule backup - you can use things like rsync / tar / filezilla / dd command or whatever to image the windows disk .
I'd go for the DD command - it's pretty standard and built in to any Linux distro and will image entire HDD's or partitions.
Actually things like Macrium (shh !! not really supposed to tell you this) use things like DD internally with a custom GUI so the user is presented with an easy windows like GUI interface and isolates the user from having to enter DD type commands directly. !!!!!
for example (as root) type : dd if=/dev/windowsC of=/dev/sdd bs=64K conv=noerror,sync
mount the remote windows HDD as /dev/windowsC as in the above example --Linux will easily read / write NTFS these days (ensure package ntfs-3g is installed ). What you call it depends on your SAMBA configuration.
Package ntfs-3g is usually installed by default and then then simply as root mount the input HDD file system as rw. When mounting a file system these days you don't need to specify the file system any more if you use the auto parameter
for example if you have say /dev/sdc1 which is a windows partition then you can mount the HDD as /mount/dev/sdc -t auto -o rw /mnt/my_mountpoint.
to mount a remote windows SAMBA share in Linux use a command similar to :
mount -t cifs -o <username>,<password> //<servername>/<sharename> /mnt/point/
you might have to type in network IP address instead of server name if netbios fails to get the server name.
ensure the remote windows machine is online and accessible at the time you take the backup.
I backup several (Windows) computers weekly this way to a Centos 7 network file server - although the client windows computer users can of course backup their stuff locally with Macrium --not an option in your case with the edition of windows being run on your relative's computer.
cheers
jimbo