Arrrgh How brain dead is windows 8 out of the box? Can't backup my drives to a Network Storage Device (NAS) has to be local drive and I just can't see the sense in that. If my hard drive fails the internal drive is not going to help If I can save that externally I might have some chance of restoring.

Thankfully there is a solution of sorts so I thought I would share what I found.

Scenario 1 - NAS is visible, set to public share can be mounted and mapped as a user. Set up windows backup to save to the network drive it fails.

Scenario 2 - Backup to a local drive, then copy to the Network drive - fails.

As it turns out UAC (User Access Controls) is what is getting in the way.

The solution is to :-

1. Run gpedit.msc, navigate and browse to Computer Configuration--Windows Settings--Security Settings--Local Policies--Security Options
2. Set policy User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode – Disabled
After reboot all is fine.

The other thing to look for is a registry setting

To resolve this issue, set the value of the restrictanonymous registry entry to 0. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. Locate and then double-click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

  1. On the right side, double-click restrictanonymous.
  2. Make sure that the value in the Value data box is set to 0, and then click OK.
  3. Close Registry Editor.
  4. Restart the computer.


If you're anything like me you give the backup a big miss or do it occasionally. I'm here to say this is not a good habit to be in, hard drives and SSD (solid state drives) fail and when they do you understand the value of backing up your data. Photos images video documents email's potentially all gone.

I now have 2 NAS devices one RAID-5 the other RAID-6 with a hot spare. The computer now backups nightly by itself and one NAS replicated to the other
is this overkill I don't think so I just don't ever want to loose data. Some of the video clips I have of my children growing up are priceless.

Kind Regards
Livio