Sharing out an external HD on my WRT610N router

Question

I've got a WRT610N router. I've put a Western Digital external hard drive on it, and am sharing it out to all of the desktops and laptops in my home (a mixture of Windows Vista and a Windows 7 machine). This is working fine.

Now I would like to be able to run the Windows Backup utility and backup my desktops and laptops to the Western Digital HD. However, when I've tried doing this I get "Access is denied" error messages. This is strange, because all of the users in my home network can read and write to the WD HD, but Windows Backup cannot, even when using the credentials of any of the users on my network. And I've entered all of them (both username and password) into the Linksys router software.

So, how do I make the Windows Backup utility work with my Linksys router so that I can backup my desktops and laptops?

Answer 1

This is normal behavior, as the Windows Backup service operates by default using the LOCAL SERVICE account, which is not allowed on the network.

For it to operate on the network, you need to change its operational account as follows:

Go to Administrative Tools / Services, find and double-click Windows Backup, go to the Log On tab, click the checkbox next to This account, click Browse, then Advanced ..., then Find Now. Double-click NETWORK SERVICE, then OK twice.

Now restart the service and try the backup again.