Schedule Backup in Windows 11/10/8/7 to Auto Protect Data

Schedule Backup Overview

You might have already recognized the importance of making backup for your Windows PCs or Servers. However, since the data on your hard drive varies each day, the initial backup file has gradually become useless. Nobody can predict what would happen in the future. It’s a good thing to backup your data regularly thus we won’t lose much if something unfavorable happens.

However, can you really remember to do the backup in a timely manner? I am afraid the answer for most people is "NO". In this case, why don’t we leave this job to free software with a "Schedule Backup" function like AOMEI Backupper Standard?

It offers the most flexible backup schedules (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) for files & folders, partitions, operating system or entire disk. You can customize backup tasks with even more useful options, such as compression, encryption and email notifications.

Please download the freeware to have a try right now!

How to Set Up a Backup Schedule (Daily/Weekly/Monthly)

The free AOMEI Backupper has Schedule Backup function included. To set up a backup schedule, click "Schedule Backup" option at the bottom of backup interface.

In Schedule Backup Setting window, 3 option are offered for free: Daily; Weekly, Monthly;

2 options are available in Professional edition: Event Triggers, USB plug in.

Before making a choice, let's see how they work separately:

Daily Mode

In daily mode, we can choose a certain time of a day for automatic backup. Or we can set up a time frame first, then choose the interval for each backup.

For example, let’s set the time frame as from 12:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Then we select 2 hours in the drop-down list as the backup interval. Therefore, AOMEI Backupper will automatically backup in every 2 hours within the time frame above (12:00 AM to 10:00 PM). In this way, we can backup multiple times in a day.

Weekly Mode

In weekly mode, you can choose the day(s) for the software to do the backup.

Monthly Mode

As for monthly mode, we can choose several days in a month to perform the backup.

Event Triggers Mode

In the Event Triggers mode, you can set the event triggered backup to run at system shutdown or startup, user log-in or log-off. This feature is available in AOMEI Backupper Professional.

USB plug in Mode

With the mode enabled, when the program detects that the source or destination USB device of the task is plugged in, it will automatically backup the data on the USB device to the local drive or backup the local data to the USB device.

Backup Method for Scheduled Task

You probably know there are 3 backup types in general: Full Backup, Incremental Backup and Differential Backup. These concepts are also closely related to scheduled backup.

• Full backup refers to a complete copy of all the data you want to back up.
• Incremental backup copies only the changed or newly added data since the last backup (full or incremental).
• Differential backup refers to the backup of the changed or new-added data since the last full backup.

Here is a visual comparison of the three:

When you create a scheduled task, the initial backup is necessarily performed as a full backup, but the type of the subsequent backups is up to you.

For your information, incremental backup is strongly recommended in AOMEI Backupper, because it’s the backup method that will greatly save your time and space. By clicking "Backup Scheme" at the bottom of Schedule interface, you can see that "Incremental Backup" is the default backup method. However, if you prefer other methods, you may also select your desired backup method between Full Backup and Differential Backup (which is supported in Professional edition).

When the backup schedule is confirmed, click OK to proceed. The "Start Backup" Button should have two drop-down options available now: 1. Add the schedule and start backup now. 2. Only add the schedule.

What if I already have created a backup image with schedule backup off but now want to enable schedule backup on the existing image? Don’t worry! Go check the image file in the main interface, right click on Advanced button at the bottom. Schedule Backup function can be enabled in this way for an existing backup image.

Conclusion

In summary, this new Schedule Backup function of AOMEI Backup will greatly help all users, who want to create backups at a lesser frequency or have multiple backup schedules, to backup their PCs and Servers in a more advanced and secure way. No more need to worry about forgetting to backup as long as you have AOMEI Backupper to do this work. Now free download AOMEI Backupper to set up schedule backup.