NTBackup (or Windows Backup) is the built-in

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

application introduced in Windows NT 3.51 and included in

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

, and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

. NTBackup comprises a

command-line utility A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command-line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most gr ...

and a set of wizard interfaces that provide multiple options to create, customize, and manage backups, and it is integrated with

Shadow Copy Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service, Volume Shadow Copy Service or VSS) is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is imple ...

and

Task Scheduler Task Scheduler (formerly Scheduled Tasks) is a job scheduler in Microsoft Windows that launches computer programs or scripts at pre-defined times or after specified time intervals. Microsoft introduced this component in the Microsoft Plus! for W ...

. NTBackup creates backups in a proprietary BKF

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

to external sources including

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability. ...

s, and

ZIP drive The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...

s. NTBackup is replaced by

Backup and Restore Backup and Restore (formerly Backup and Restore Center) is the primary backup component of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can create file and folder backups, as well as system images backups, to be used for recovery in the event of data corrup ...

and

WBAdmin 
In computing, WBAdmin is a command-line utility built into Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The command is used to perform backups an ...

starting with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, which provide similar functionality and instead use the

Virtual Hard Disk VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and its successor VHDX are file formats representing a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). They may contain what is found on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and f ...

file format to backup content; however, in Windows Vista, it is possible to restore NTBackup by copying necessary files from Windows XP. Windows Server Backup replaces NTBackup beginning with

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on Fe ...

; neither Backup and Restore nor Windows Server Backup support the use of tape drives. For reading/restoring older backups, Microsoft has made available the NTBackup Restore utility for

/Windows Server 2008 and for

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became General av ...

which can only read files. When used with tape drives, NTBackup uses the

Microsoft Tape Format Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) is the tape format used by several backup tools for the Microsoft Windows platform. Notable examples include Microsoft's NTBackup program, Backup Exec and the backup utilities included in Microsoft SQL Server Micr ...

(MTF), which is also used by

BackupAssist BackupAssist is a suite of backup software for physical and virtual Windows servers that targets small and medium-sized businesses. It includes the products BackupAssist Classic, BackupAssist ER, BackupAssist WFH, and BackupAssist 365. The products ...

and Backup Exec and

Veeam Backup & Replication Veeam Backup & Replication is a proprietary backup app developed by Veeam for virtual environments built on VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. The software provides backup, restore and replication functionality for ...

and is compatible with BKF.

Features

NTBackup supports several operating system features including backing up the computer's ''System State''. On computers that are not

domain controller A domain controller (DC) is a server computer that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a network server that is responsible for allowing host access to domain resources. It authenticates users, store ...

s, this includes the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and use ...

, boot files, files protected by

Windows File Protection Windows File Protection (WFP), a sub-system included in Microsoft Windows operating systems of the Windows 2000 and Windows XP era, aims to prevent programs from replacing critical Windows system files. Protecting core system files mitigates proble ...

, Performance counter configuration information, COM+ class registration database, IIS metabase, replicated data sets,

Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related ...

data, Cluster service information, and Certificate Services database. On domain controllers, NTBackup can back up

Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was used only for centralize ...

, including the SYSVOL directory share. NTBackup supports

Encrypting File System The Encrypting File System (EFS) on Microsoft Windows is a feature introduced in version 3.0 of NTFS that provides filesystem-level encryption. The technology enables files to be transparently encrypted to protect confidential data from attackers ...

, NTFS hard links and

junction point The NTFS file system defines various ways to redirect files and folders, e.g., to make a file point to another file or its contents without making a copy of it. The object being pointed to is called the target. Such file is called a hard or symbo ...

alternate data streams New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred file ...

disk quota A disk quota is a limit set by a system administrator that restricts certain aspects of file system usage on modern operating systems. The function of using disk quotas is to allocate limited disk space in a reasonable way. Types of quotas There ...

information, mounted drive and remote storage information. It saves NTFS permissions, audit entries and ownership settings, respects the

archive bit The archive bit is a file attribute used by CP/M, Microsoft operating systems, OS/2, and AmigaOS. It is used to indicate whether or not the file has been backed up (archived). Usage In Windows and OS/2, when a file is created or modified, th ...

attribute on files and folders and can create normal, copy, differential,

incremental Increment or incremental may refer to: *Incrementalism, a theory (also used in politics as a synonym for gradualism) *Increment and decrement operators, the operators ++ and -- in computer programming *Incremental computing *Incremental backup, wh ...

and daily backups, backup catalogs, as well as Automated System Recovery. It supports logging and excluding files from the backup per-user or for all users. Hardware compression is supported if the tape drive supports it. Software compression is not supported, even in Backup to files. NTBackup can use removable media devices that are supported natively by the

Removable Storage Manager Removable may refer to: * Removable media, computing/electronic data storage * Removable partial denture, dentistry * Removable User Identity Module (R-UIM), telecommunication In mathematical analysis * Removable discontinuity * Removable set * R ...

(RSM) component of Windows. However, RSM supports only those tape devices which have RSM-aware WDM drivers. NTBackup from Windows XP and newer includes

Volume Shadow Copy Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service, Volume Shadow Copy Service or VSS) is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is impl ...

(VSS) support and thus can back up locked files. In the case of Windows XP Home Edition, NTBackup is not installed by default but is available on the Windows XP installation disc. Windows XP introduced a wizard-style

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

for NTBackup in addition to the advanced UI. An expert system administrator can use the NTBackup scripting language to create a functional backup system. Scripting enables the system administrator to automate and schedule backups of files and ''system state'', control the RSM to follow a media rotation strategy, reprogram the RSM to work with external HDD and NAS as well as tape, send email reminders to prompt users to insert the media and compile backup reports that include logs and remaining capacity. An alternative to scripting is GUI software such as

, which automates NTBackup and can perform automatic, scheduled backups of Windows-based servers and PCs using NTBackup. Third-party plug-ins can be used with the deprecated ''Removable Storage'' component in Microsoft Windows to support modern storage media such as

external hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magneti ...

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

optical media In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data ( bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces ...

such as CD,

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

and network file systems exposing the pieces of media as virtual tape to NTBackup which is based on ''Removable Storage''. NTBackup can be used under Windows Vista and up by copying the NTBackup files from a Windows XP machine. To use tapes or other backup locations that use the Removable Storage Manager, you will need to turn it on in the ''Turn Windows features on or off'' control panel, but in Windows 7 and up, the component was removed.

Corrupt or damaged backup files

Due to the large size typical of today's backups, and faulty data transmission over unreliable

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

interfaces, backup files are prone to be corrupt or damaged. When trying to restore, NTBackup may display messages like "The Backup File Is Unusable", "CRC failed error" or "Unrecognized Media". Third-party, mostly commercial solutions may recover corrupt BKF files.How to recover corrupt or damaged BKF backup files
/ref>

References

External links

* Microsoft
Backup Basics from Microsoft

NTBackup Guide for Windows XP Professional

MSKB104169: Files that are automatically skipped by NTBackupMicrosoft Tape Format (MTF) Specification Document by Seagatemftar: a filter to convert MFT/BKF files to the more common tar format (Linux and Unices)
{{Windows commands Backup software for Windows Windows administration Discontinued Windows components

Features

Corrupt or damaged backup files

References

Further reading

External links