The first thing you need to do is pick out the right drive for your system. Make sure you know how much data you are going to be backing up, so you know how much tape capacity to look for in a drive. Try to plan ahead. If you plan on adding additional hard drives down the road, you want to make sure your tape system will be able to handle the planned expansion.

On the other hand, you don't want to go out and buy the largest capacity tape drive you can find if you are only going to be backing up a one gigabyte (GB) drive. The best drives to look at are the 4 and 8 millimeter DAT drives. These drives are SCSI devices and, depending on the drive, are capable of backing up between 2GB and 24GB per tape.

A DAT drive is not cheap and pricing will start at around $400. If these drives are out of your price range, check out the usually less expensive drives that use the Travan tape cartridges. You can find these tape products starting around $240.

If you decide on a Travan tape drive, make sure it uses the SCSI interface so that it is compatible with Windows NT. Stay away from the lower priced backup devices. These drives use a proprietary controller or hang off the floppy controller, and they do not provide drivers for use with Windows NT.

You can easily back up your entire system using Windows NT's Backup utility.

Once you have purchased a tape drive and have it properly attached to your system, you need to install the device driver so that Windows NT can use the drive. Boot the machine and log in with the administrator account.

Next, go to the Control Panel and double click the Tape Devices icon. From the Tape Devices window, click the Detect button. This will scan your machine for the newly added tape device. After it detects it, it will either install the supporting driver or ask you to insert the diskette provided by the hardware manufacturer.

If Windows NT does not detect a tape device, you may have to install it manually. Just click the Drivers tab from within the Tape Devices window and select the Add button. A list of tape drive manufactures comes up on the left with the models of tape drives on the right. Just select your manufacturer and drive model, then click OK. Windows NT will prompt you for the Windows NT CD-ROM and will copy the needed driver to your hard drive.

If you do not see your tape drive on the list, put the diskette provided by the tape manufacturer in your diskette drive and click the Have Disk button. Your drive should be listed. Select your tape drive and click OK. Windows NT will copy the needed driver files to your hard drive.

After Windows NT copies the needed driver files, it is always a good idea to reboot your machine. When your machine comes back up, go to the Tape Devices window and make sure your tape driver appears and is loaded. If you want to see more information, click the Properties button. This window will tell you if your tape device is working properly.

Start the backup program by selecting Start, Programs, Administrative Tools, then Backup. The backup program will then launch and display two windows. One window will show you your available drives and the other will show available tape devices.

To perform a backup, you first need to select the files you want to back up. Selections are made from the Drives window. If you want to back up an entire drive, just click the box to the left of the drive so that an X appears in the box. To back up individual files, double click a drive and a new window will appear.

This window shows the directory entries on the left and the contents of the selected directory on the right. Double click a directory entry to show the contents of that directory. Selections can be made by clicking the box to the left of the desired entry that is to be backed up. Just click the box again to deselect a directory or file that was checked by mistake or that you no longer want to include in the backup.

To back up a single directory entry, simply mark that directory. To back up individual files, find the file in the directory listing and mark it. This can be repeated as much as necessary until all files and directories that are to be backed up have been marked.

You can set your backup options when you create the backup set.

Once all selections are made it is time to perform the backup. Just click the Backup icon on the top left of the window. The Backup Information window will come up. This window displays tape information and available options for your backup. You can give your tape a name by entering a unique name in the Tape Name field. Try using descriptive names to name your tapes.

For example, you might use the name "Full Backup" to name a tape that backs up an entire system, or Accounting Data to name a tape that backs up only the data files of your accounting system. Keep in mind that this name is used to name the tape and not the backup set. Tapes can contain many backup sets, each with a unique name of its own. We will discuss this later on.

Using descriptive names can be helpful if you ever need to locate a specific tape or backup set to use for the restore operation. To the right of the Name Field there is the Operation Window.

This window has two options: Append and Replace. When you use the replace option, your new backup selections will be placed at the beginning of the tape overwriting any previous backup set(s) that already exist on the tape. On the other hand, choosing the append option leaves all existing backup sets on the tape intact, and simply starts using the tape where the last backup set on the tape ends.

Below the Tape Name field are three options. The first, labeled Verify After Backup, instructs the backup to compare the files on the hard drive to the files that were just backed up to ensure that the files were backed up properly. Checking this option will make the backup operation run longer, but is invaluable in making sure the data was stored correctly on the tape.

The second option, labeled Backup Local Registry, tells the backup operation to back up the Windows NT Registry so that important system configuration information is saved. The third option, Restrict Access to Owner or Administrator, when checked, limits tape access to the creator of the tape, members of the Backup Group, and the Administrator account.

This option is normally used where security is implemented, and usually in a networked environment. The Backup Set Information window allows you to assign a name to your backup set and choose the type of backup you want to perform. As we discussed earlier, it is important to use descriptive names to describe your tape and your backup sets.

In this section, there is a description field. This is where you enter the description for your backup set. Using the data in this description makes it easier to locate when your are looking for a specific backup set.

There is also a Backup Type selection. This is a pull-down window that contains five different ways you can perform your backup. Most of the backups you do should be either Normal or Copy. Both of these will back up all selected files. The difference is that using Copy will not mark the files as being backed up, whereas Normal marks the files as being backed up by resetting the file's archive bit.

The other types are for using a backup family set, consisting of a complete backup and backups of only changed files. Incremental Backup and Differential Copy are used in conjunction with the backup types Normal and Copy respectively, where Normal marks the files as backed up and Copy does not. Both of these back up only files that have been changed since the last full backup. The Daily Copy option only backs up files that have been modified that day, and also does not mark those files as having been backed up.

The final options before submitting the backup job deal with backup log information. The Log Information section allows you to specify the log file name and the amount of reporting to include in the log.

The Summary Only option includes the time the backup was started, errors encountered during the backup, and the time the backup finished. The Full Detail option includes all of the statistics of the Summary Only option, and adds a complete list of the directories and files that were backed up.

After all descriptions are entered and options set, click the OK button to begin the job. When the job is complete, a statistics window will appear giving you information about the completed job.

To restore files, you need to go to the tape window. Put in the tape that contains the files to be restored. A list of backup sets should appear on the right side of the Tapes window. Just double-click the set that contains the data you want to restore.

This will bring up a new window listing the directory structure contained in the backup set. Simply select the information you want to restore and click the Restore button. The Restore Information window will pop up. This window gives you the option to restore to an alternate path, restore the local Registry, and to verify after backup.

It also has an option to restore file permissions, which restores the original file rights. The log information is the same as for the Backup command. When you have all options set for the restore, click the OK button. The restore procedure will begin, showing details about the job upon completion.

While the backup software included with Windows NT is good for performing basic backup and restore operations, it does not even come close to the third-party backup solutions currently on the market. It includes basic backup and restore functions, but that is about it. It does not currently support scheduling, unattended backup and restore functions, or disaster recovery.

by Kimberly Maxwell and Scott Jones