NTBackup on User Machines

[giwtnips]

Hello,

To give a background of the environment, there are about 80+ mobile users (which means 80+ laptops). To backup each users computer, the other IT or myself manually add the backup schedule (which is once a week) and define its time, destination directory, etc. Is there a way to predefine a backup task and push it out by either group policy and/or logon script?

[cluberti]

The NTBackup tasks are just scheduled tasks, and likely can be copied out like any other scheduled task. Also, if you know exactly what the scheduled task will contain, you could also script the schtasks.exe executable to create the task in a logon script or machine startup script, depending on who runs the task.

[giwtnips]

Awesome, thank you!!

How do I go about pre-defining the the backup itself? For example, lets say I want to set each machine to perform a differential backup, save it to a network share, and tell it to replace existing backups, all in one swoop. Is there a temp file that's created when using the the backup wizard that I can copy and use as a backup template?

[cluberti]

Awesome, thank you!!

How do I go about pre-defining the the backup itself? For example, lets say I want to set each machine to perform a differential backup, save it to a network share, and tell it to replace existing backups, all in one swoop. Is there a temp file that's created when using the the backup wizard that I can copy and use as a backup template?

No, there's no temp file. NTBackup isn't a full-featured backup solution, and while it's good at doing backups as scheduled tasks, it's a bit too limited for what you may be trying to do. You can copy the scheduled tasks, but I don't know of any way to make a template like this.