How to Use Windows XP Scheduled Tasks to Automate Your Backup Utility

Joli Ballew
Categories : Windows platform ,Computing
Tags : Computing windows platform topics windows server

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Automate Back Ups

(This is part VI of the series Windows XP Backup Utility – Everything You Need to Know.)

Using the Backup utility is a great configuration to apply to your Windows XP PC, because you can change the backup type, what’s backed up, and where it’s stored for each job you create while creating the scheduled task.

Here’s how to create a scheduled job using the Backup utility:

Open Backup in Advanced mode as detailed in previous articles.
Click the Schedule Jobs tab and choose a day to create the backup job.

Click Add Job, and then click Next in the Welcome To The Backup Wizard page.
On the What To Back Up page, you can choose Back Up Everything On This Computer; Back Up Only Selected Files, Drives, Or Network Data; or Only Back Up the System State Data. If you select the second choice, you’ll be prompted to choose folders before you can continue. If you choose either of the other two choices, the Backup Wizard will continue as described in step 6.
On the Backup, Type, Destination, And Name page, choose the backup type, browse to a place to save your backup, and type a name for the backup.
On the Completing The Backup Wizard page, verify that the information is correct and click Back to change anything that is not. To complete the wizard and begin the backup, click Finish.
To set advanced options, click the Advanced button and work through the remaining pages. The Advanced button allows you to select a backup type, which is detailed in the following section. You can also decide if you want to append the data to an existing backup or not, and whether to perform the backup now or later. You certainly can’t have too many backups or back up too often. Configure backups to run at least weekly, store the backups in a secure location, and use the Restore utility if a restoration of data is necessary.

This post is part of the series: Windows XP Backup Utility – Everything You Need to Know

It’s important to back up data regularly, and, you need a good backup strategy. In this series of articles, you’ll learn all about backing up data:using XP’s Backup utility, backing up automatically, nd restoring when a crash occurs. You’ll also learn what to back up, how often, and more.