Schedule

Data Protection Software: Schedule Page

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This page is used to set the backup schedule for remote backups, local server backups, and local disk backups.

There is one tab across the top for each backup destination. If a particular destination is not yet configured on the My Account page, then the tab for it will be hidden.

If you are performing both local backups and remote backups, then we recommend scheduling the local backup to start one to three hours before the remote backup is scheduled to start. Certain operating systems (Windows 2003 or better and Windows Vista or better) do allow you to backup remotely and concurrently at the same time; however, we recommend that in most cases it is better to have the local backup run first. If you are backing up Microsoft Exchange, then the backups must not run concurrently. To enforce this, change the Restrict Concurrent Backups option on the Backup tab of the Options page to be set to checked (Yes).

Scheduled backups can be disabled by changing the setting to backing up Manually. Otherwise, use the Weekly option to backup one or more times per week (the default is to backup every day). Unless you have good reasons for not backing up every day, we recommend daily backups, as the backup is able to best optimize for performance on a daily schedule. The first time you come to this page for a particular backup destination it will suggest a random time for daily backups between 7pm and 5am.

You can indicate how many times who would like to backup every day. If this is more than 1, then it will evenly divide 24 hours by the number of times to backup, and then schedule a backup that often starting at the backup time. For example, if you indicate to backup 3 times per day starting at 6:30pm, then it will schedule backups for 6:30pm, 2:30am, and 10:30am.

Note: If you are backing up individual files that are individually larger than 10 GB, we recommend only backing up once or twice per day, with the best time to start the backup being in the early evening hours.

If you need to schedule a backup to start on a particular date and time in the future, then you can use the Set and Clear buttons in the Schedule a one time backup control group to do this.

There are three options that affect scheduling:

· Wake the computer to backup your data: If this option is checked, then a Windows task scheduler task will be created that will be triggered at the appropriate times to ensure that your computer wakes up from standby, if necessary. Note that if your computer has been put into hibernation it will not be able to wake up your computer. If your computer is always on (e.g., because it's a server) we recommend leaving this unchecked.

· Start backup only if logged on: If a Windows task scheduler task is needed in order to schedule the backup (either because you are waking up the computer to backup your data or you are not using the supervisor service for scheduling), then normally it will ask you for your Windows password so that the Windows task scheduler can log you on if you are not logged on when the backup needs to begin. However, if you don't have a Windows password, or you don't want to enter your password, then check this option. It will allow you to continue without entering a password, but when it's checked it also means that the backup will not be able to start if you are not logged in.

· Use supervisor service for scheduling: If this is checked, then Data Protection Software will use a Windows service instead of the Windows task scheduler to actually start the scheduled backup. In general we have found that the Windows service is more reliable than the Windows task scheduler in starting backups. However, if you are running a version of Windows older than Windows 2000 or you have specialized scheduling needs, then it may be necessary to rely solely on the Windows task scheduler for starting scheduled backups.