CrashPlan: Backing Up Network Shares

Decide which PC you will be using to manage the back ups.  Ensure that the user account for that PC has a password.  The steps that follow will NOT work if the PC’s user account does not require a password.  If your PC user account does not currently require a password then click Start and then the user icon at the top right of the pop up.  Select “create a password for your account” and create your password.
Having created a password you will now be required to enter it every time you login to that PC.  If you are the only user of that PC and don’t wish to enter your password every time then follows these steps
Click Start and in the search box type “netplwiz”
Open the netplwiz application from the search results.
Untick the box for “Users must enter a username and password to use this computer”.
Click OK
Now you need to make CP logon as with your PC user account rather than as SYSTEM.  This step is omitted from most of the guides I have seen but is essential, and will only work if you have also done the previous steps.
Click Start and type services.msc in the search box.
Open the Services application from the search results.
Scroll down to “Crashplan Backup Service” and right click and select “Properties”
Under the Logon tab, click the “This Account” radio button
Click Browse and enter your PC Username (eg Eric in my case) in the “Enter the object name to select” box.  Click “Check Names” and then OK.
I now see “.\eric” in the “This Account” box.  You should see “.\your username”.  Enter your PC user account password twice and select OK.
If you have followed all the previous steps you should now be prompted or given the opportunity to Restart the service.  Do so.
Crashplan should now be running under your PC user account.
Now you are ready to create the “symbolic links” from a folder on your PC to a corresponding “share” on your NAS, prior to beginning backing up.
Create a folder anywhere on your PC that is convenient and give it a suitable name.  You will need to create one folder for each “share” on your NAS that you want to back up.  On my PC I have a data partition (D) on my primary drive (the one with the OS) and 2 other drives that are “spanned” to create a 6TB volume (F) that I use exclusively for backups from my NAS.  Therefore I created my “symbolic link” folders in my data partition (D).  As an example, I called one of them “DS1-photo” and its “path” is “D:\DS1-photo”.  I then created similar folders for my other NAS shares; media, video, music etc.
Open CP and then under Destinations select “Folders”.  Click Select and browse to one of the folders created above, eg D:\DS1-photo”.  Select and click OK.  DO NOT CLOSE THE CP WINDOW!
Via Windows Explorer, return to the folder you just selected and delete it.  Yes, I know this sounds weird but this is what all the guides say and it does work OK.  Not sure what happens if you don’t delete the folder at this stage, so its safest just to do as instructed.
Click Start and type “cmd”.  DO NOT CLICK ENTER!  Right click on the CMD application in the results box and select “Run as Administrator”.  A black box window will open up.
Type the following, replacing my example folder, NAS name and share name with your own details: mklink /d d:\DS1-photo \\diskstation1\photo then click enter.  You should get a reply that a symbolic link has been created between the chosen folder and the share on the NAS.  In my example diskstaton1 is the name of my NAS and photo is the share on the NAS I am trying to back up.
Close the black window.  Via Windows Explorer return to the location where you created and then deleted the folder (eg D:\DS1-photo”).  It should have magically reappeared with a little arrow in the folder icon.  If you double click on this folder you should now see the contents of the relevant share on your NAS; in my case my photos.
That is it, all done!  Repeat steps 5-10 for each share on your NAS that you want to back up.
Now in Crashplan you just use this folder as a SOURCE (even though you just created it as a destination) and backup to wherever you want, as for any other source folder.

I really hope I have not missed anything, but if I have, please feel free to jump in and contribute.