You can schedule any number of backup jobs to run at regularly scheduled intervals. If you use Backup Wizard to create a backup job, be sure you click Advanced to get to the scheduling options. To schedule a backup job without using the wizard:
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Although the settings you make in these dialog boxes aren't saved as part of the selections file when you run a backup job interactively, Backup saves all these settings as part of a scheduled backup job.
If you haven't already saved your backup selections, Backup prompts you to do so. (You can schedule only backup selections that have been saved in a file.) Once that detail has been taken care of, Backup displays the Set Account Information dialog box.
The Scheduled Job Options dialog box appears.
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To review the job options, click the Backup Details tab.
On the Schedule tab of the Schedule Job dialog box, you can specify the interval, the start time, an ending date, and other options; and you can set up multiple schedules.
Scheduled jobs are set up as scheduled tasks that appear in your Scheduled Tasks folder. This means that you don't need to leave Backup running for the scheduled jobs to run unattended; Scheduled Tasks automatically launches Backup at the appropriate time. In fact, you don't even need to be logged on to your computer. If you're not logged on (or if someone else is logged on) at the appointed time, Scheduled Tasks launches Backup using the user account name and password that you specified in the Set Account Information dialog box; in other words, it runs that one application as if you had logged on and launched it yourself.
If you're backing up to tape, before the scheduled job runs, be sure to insert the tape you specified in step 2. If you forget to put the correct tape in the drive, Backup will stop and display a dialog box similar to the one shown earlier in Figure 29-5.
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The Easiest Way to Schedule a One-Time Backup JobYou can also create a scheduled job from Backup's Schedule Jobs tab: click the Add Job button or double-click any date. Doing so launches the Backup Wizard with predefined settings (which you can modify) to create a backup job that's scheduled to run on the selected date.
The Schedule Jobs tab of the Backup window displays a monthly calendar with an icon for each scheduled job, as shown in Figure 29-13. The letter in the corner of each icon indicates the backup type: N for normal, D for differential, and so on.
To modify or delete a scheduled job, click its icon to open the Scheduled Job Options dialog box. On the Schedule Data tab, click Properties to change the schedule, or click Delete to delete the job.
Figure 29-13. The Schedule Jobs tab shows all scheduled jobs as icons.
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To review the job options, click the Backup Details tab in the Scheduled Job Options dialog box. (You can't change these options here; the simplest way to do that is to create a new scheduled job.)