Login as Administrator. Make sure the Scheduler is running by going into the command prompt (Run - cmd) and typing in AT. If it is running, you will see a message "no tasks running" or alternatively, you will see a list of scheduled tasks.
If the scheduler is not running, go to Control Panel - Services - Schedule - Startup and change Startup Type to Automatic. Make sure Log On As is set to System Account. Click OK and then click Start to start the service and make sure that its the status changes to Started on the main screen for Services.
Here is an example of a batch file C:\backup.bat. It assumes that there is a directory C:\Logfiles where the last 10 logfiles are stored:
C:
cd \Logfiles
del backup10.log
ren backup9.log backup10.log
ren backup8.log backup9.log
...
ren backup.log backup1.log
ntbackup backup E: /d"Full backup" /b /v /l"C:\Logfiles\backup.log" /e
Go to the command prompt and type in the following line and press the Enter key:
at 22:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F cmd /c c:\backup.bat
Enter AT to display the list of jobs. The details will be shown as '1 Each M T W Th F 10:00PM cmd /c c:\backup.bat'.
If you made a mistake, enter 'at 1 /del' to delete the job number 1 and re-enter the details.
The backup job will run automatically at 10:00PM. The server can be left at the login prompt, without anyone being logged in.
Please note that if you forget the insert the tape or if a hardware error occurs, the only way to unload Ntbackup is to restart the Windows NT server. Not pretty, but it works.
Restoring from a Ntbackup tape can take long because the full tape catalog needs to be created first before you can select the items to be restored. If you happen to have a PC around, you can also schedule a simple command file with XCOPY to run overnight on a Windows XP, copying the important directories from the server to the local hard drive, assuming that this does not create a security risk.
