archiving to a windows machine
 

I want to make a backup of a directory on my linux box (running TSL 2.2) onto one of my windows machines.

Someone told me that I could use tar to do this, but I am unsure of the command to use.

would it be something like:

tar /data -cZ \\laptop\backup


where c = create new and Z = compress


Would this work?

Unlike windows, you cannot use \\machine\share syntax under linux. You would need to either use smbclient or mount the share prior to the tar operation.

can you go a little in depth about how to use smbclient?

Well, smbclient can be used like a command line ftp program (I've done this to write a PHP front end to a samba file server). Mounting the remote samba share (using smbmount/mount -t smbfs) is likely to be simpler and still accomplish all that you need.