I Thanksneed to set up a new network with one 24/7 machine having a second partitioned drive with each partition available to only one specific machine on the network for backup and other working files. What's the best way to do this? Thanks!

Are you talking a total of three machines, or just two? Although Windows 7 isn't designed as a server system it'll certainly do something similar to what you want with only that few machines. You can't really set up access "per machine" so you should set up your machines with different user logins then set the permissions on your shares to allow full access only from those users. These should be limited users and not administrators. Remember that on the "server" machine an administrative user will alway have full access (or be able to give it to themselves.)

Am wanting a single machine (only one on 24/7) to have a second drive with partitions that will serve as a backup drive for four other machines. Have not worked with networks needing separate users before - only worked with home/small bus networks where everything is shared.

It's the same principle. Let's say you've added a 1TB drive for your shared files. You could set it up two ways: 1 - A single partition with four shared folders (I'll get to the actual sharing in a moment) or 2 - Four separate 250GB partitions, one for each user. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. The main advantage to #1 is that it'll be a whole lot easier to manage; the disadvantage is that if something happens to the partition all of the users lose their data. For #2 it's just the opposite - you've now got four partitions to manage, but if something goes wrong with one of them the others should still be fine. Sharing would work the same for either: Set up a folder (in scenario 1 there would be four folders, one for each user; in scenario 2 there would be a single folder on each partition - you really don't want to change the permissions of the partition itself so we work with folders.) In the folder's NTFS permissions assign full access to just the one user and deny access to all others; you might want to leave the local administrator's permissions in place and don't deny them access, just-in-case. In the share permissions set it up exactly the same way - full access for the user, deny access to all others; in this case it's not necessary to give the local administrator any permissions because they shouldn't be accessing the data via the share.

Thanks. This is the schema I was assuming, but the part I've never dwelt with it the permissions part. Where/how do I stipulate a specific users access to a particular folder?

And this is where it gets tricky. It'd be much easier if you were using an actual server system with a domain structure like Windows 2003 or Windows 2008. But still... You'll have to create a user account for each user on your "server". Make sure they have the same user name and password as the user on the "workstation" (it doesn't really have to be the same, it's just easier for your users to work with). On the folder you're going to share right-click and select Properties. Select the Security tab. Add your users and set their permissions. Select the Sharing tab. Click on Advanced Sharing. Check the box for Share this folder. Enter your Share name and select Permissions. When you're done click OK.

Thanks! This will do it for sure :-) Really appreciate the help and directions.