Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

For an unknown but probably brief time, I have a computer with a DVD burner in my house (owned by my ex-housemate who wasn't carted it over to his new apartment yet). Despite not having a DVD reader of my own (unless the DVD video player hooked to the telly can be convinced to let a computer access a filesystem on a DVD, which would surprise me), said ex-housemate suggested that since getting a hand-me-down box with a DVD reader in it in the near future wasn't all that unlikely, I should go ahead and back up my computers using his DVD burner while it's still here.

I'm backing up the Linux machines by firing up a Cygwin shell on the ex-housemate's computer, throwing a 'tar' command at the Linux box via ssh, and redirecting the output of the 'ssh' command to a tarfile that'll get burned to DVD.

I don't know how to do the equivalent under Windows.

Maybe it's easier because it's a Windows-to-Windows connection? A built-in Windows tool that I just need to know the name of? Or maybe I can do the exact same trick as for the Linux machines and count on Cygwin's 'tar' to see all the funky sup3r sekrit Windows crap that I'll probably need to get back after a catastrophe? Thing is, being "just a user" when it comes to Windows, and not even a very frequent Windows user these days, I don't really know what 'gotchas' are lurking.

So I beg of the WinAdmins here, a clue or two. How would you do this?