Scheduled complete PC backup

[Tim]

Is it possible to schedule a complete PC backup to start automatically using
Vista's backup utility? I can see this capability with the selective
backup, but not with the complete backup option. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Yes, this is possible using a combination of wbadmin.exe, the command-line
equivalent of Complete PC Backup, and Task Scheduler.

 

[Tim]

Thanks for the reply. It's nice to have that feature available, albeit
somewhat hidden. I looked around, but couldn't find any comprehensive
documentation for wbadmin. My main questions are: what's the restore
procedure (can the backup be restored with the Vista Backup and Restore
Center, or is it a different format)? Is there any compression of the
backup? Thanks for your help.

 

[Lang Murphy]

To restore one must boot from the Vista install DVD and select
Repair/restore and then point to the location of the backup file. Don't know
about compression. I would think not. Only because the Complete PC Backup I
did went pretty quickly. I suspect that had compression been involved it
would have taken much longer than it did. But that's just a SWAG, not a
verified statement.

Lang

 

[Tim]

I did a test of the wbadmin function. It does apparently use some
compression. I backed up 48.6GB (on an 80GB drive), and the total backup
size was 39.3GB. The file format is .vhd, which is apparently the same
format used by Complete PC Backup (and Microsoft's Virtual PC). So, it
looks like it can be restored using Complete PC Restore (which is supposedly
on the Vista installation disk). The backup took about 25 minutes, so
roughly 2GB per minute.

 

[Guest]

It appears that WB uses VSS which allows it to backup everything on-the-fly
and to add incremental file differences to the existing backup set. Very
nice. Glad to see we can schedule this operation via Task Scheduler.

I see that Task Scheduler still doesn't have a WMI interface