Want more Win2K tips and tricks? Automatically sign up for our free Windows 2000 Professional newsletter, delivered each Tuesday!

You’re probably very familiar with the Backup
application included with Windows. Backup provides a graphical
interface for creating, cataloging, and restoring backup sets.

In many situations, Backup’s GUI is all you
need to manage backups on a workstation. Occasionally, however, you
might need to initiate a backup operation from a command console.
For example, perhaps you want to create a backup script and run the
script using the AT command every day at 3:00 A.M.

The Backup application’s executable,
ntbackup.exe, supports several switches and options for
command-line execution, making it possible to perform backups
dynamically from a console or integrate backup operations in a
script.

You can’t specify the files and folders to
include in the backup by setting options from the command console.
Instead, you must create a selection set with the GUI and save the
set as a file with a BKS file extension. To do so, open Backup,
select the folders and files, and choose File | Save Selections As.
Enter a name, click Save, and close Backup.

The following command syntax backs up the
folders and files defined in the file MySet.bks, names the backup
set “My Backup”, and stores the backup in
G:\backups\MyBackup.bkf:

ntbackup backup “G:\BackupDefs\MySet.bks” /j “My
Backup” /f
“G:\backups\MyBackup.bkf”

For more information on the syntax for
ntbackup.exe, open a command console and enter ntbackup /?, or search the
Help file from the GUI interface.