Time Machine Backup to a Windows computer

Question

Is it possible to do a time machine backup from a MacBook Pro to a Windows 7 PC? (i.e. use Windows 7 as a time capsule)

Answer 1

There was a lifehacker article on doing exactly this by creating a sparse HFS+ bundle on the Windows machines. You could use a Linux machine or Amazon S3 using s3fs + encfs too.

Time Machine requires an HFS+ filesystems backup disks like this sparse bundle because Time Machine uses Apple's unusual directory hard links.

Linux could theoretically read the HTF+ sparse bundle but Windows sounds doubtful.