After years in business and using a computer I can categorically tell you that the only time people get serious about backups is when something important has been lost. I've seen it with individuals losing photos, to big business customers getting complacent and not repairing or replacing defective backup devices.
With Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing a new, for them, backup system for user files. Called File History, it monitors the Libraries, Desktop, Favorites, and Contacts folders and copies any changed files to an external storage device. The default setting will be to do this every hour although that can be changed.
The external location can be either an external drive connected by USB or some other local connection or a network drive. If you have
a NAS in the office then you can have the backups sent there.
The idea behind File History is that it's set and forget. Once you've turned File History on, you don't need to use it again unless you want to restore a file that's been lost of damaged.
For a small business, we would not recommend File History, or Apple's Time Machine which works in a similar way, as the only form of backup you use. But we expect that File History will be very useful for small offices and mobile workers.
Apple's Time Machine works similarly but captures changes made to the entire system, not just user-specific folders.
Microsoft's engineering team has prepared a more detailed article if you want more detail on this new feature.
