NTBackup Walk-through

This article describes how to use the built-in backup feature of Windows Server 2003.

Windows Server 2003 comes with built-in backup software, called 'ntbackup', which can be used to backup files to an alternate drive in your server, or a different server completely. It can also be set up to run at specific times of day.

To start using 'ntbackup', click on Start and then Run. At the prompt, type in 'ntbackup' and press OK.

On the initial screen, leave the box for 'Always start in wizard mode' checked, and click Next.

On the next window, choose 'Back up files and settings', and click Next.

The next window will give you the option of performing a full system backup, which is essentially creating a recovery disk for your server, or to select individual files and folders to back up. For now, let's select 'Let me choose what to back up'. Click Next.

The next window will show the file structure of your server. From here, you can select which files and folders you would like to back up by placing a check mark in the box next to them.

For now, let's choose the 'C:\Inetpub' folder. You can navigate to it by expanding the folder structure, and placing a check-mark next to it. Once done, click Next.

Now, you need to select a location to back up the files to. If you have multiple servers, you can set the backup software to back up to a completely different machine, however for the purposes of this article, we will back up the 'Inetpub' folder to a different folder on the 'C:' drive. Click the button which says Browse.

Let's save the backup to the 'C:\backup' folder.

Now, we can give the backup a name. Let's call this one 'Inetpub Backup'. Once you've given the backup set a name, click Next.

The backup is now ready to start. If you click Finish, it will start instantly, yet only run once. Let's give the backup a schedule to follow by clicking Advanced.

In the drop-down menu under 'Select the type of backup', choose 'Daily', and click Next.

Place a check mark in the option which says, 'Verify data after backup'. This will ensure the data backup is not backing up to a corrupted set, and is vital to maintaining usable backups.

On the next window, choose 'Replace existing backups', as allowing the backup sets to be appended will eventually accumulate a great deal of space on your hard drive (depending on what is being backed up), and replacing will create a new backup set each time and keep the file size relative to the amount of data being backed up. Click Next once you have selected how you want your backup sets to function.

Now the program will give you the option to set a schedule for how often the backup sets will run. Click on 'Later', and then click on 'Set Schedule'.

Here, you can set how often you want the backups to run. For the job to run once per day, click the drop-down list and choose 'Daily'.

Now, you can set the time at which you would like it to run. For now, let's run the backups at midnight. Once your desired time is set, click OK.

Windows will then prompt you for the user under which to run the backup job. Enter your password for the server, and click OK.

You can now verify that the correct schedule is in place for the backup job. Enter in a name for the Scheduled Task, which can be the same as the backup name, and click Next. You will be asked to enter your password again. Once entered, click OK.

You should now receive a confirmation window containing all the backup settings, and the backup job will run at the the time you have specified.

If you have any questions regarding the NT Backup software, please feel free to contact our Technical Support Department for assistance.