We all know, that it is very hard to keep Windows clean and virus free. And if your system does get infected, the only bulletproof way to fix it is to reinstall it. So it only makes sense to have your data backed up, so you always can bring it back to the newly installed machine. In this post, I would like to explain how you can do Windows backup, using a free backup software - ntbackup. Below, I will show how to make full, incremental, or differential backup of your data.
NTBackup comes usually with your installation, which means, technically it is a free software, so there is nothing extra to install.
There are few ways of designing you backup procedure. Here are three main methods:

• Periodic full backup. A full backup that write over the last one. Plain and simple, you more or less keep just one backup file, inefficient, and time consuming.
• Incremental backup. Making one full backup and then increment changes every time it executes. Quickest way of performing a backup, since only the changes will be backed up, however more complex on the recovery. First you would have to recover full backup and then every increment will have to be restored. If one of them is corrupt, the data recovery will be inconsistent.
  
• Differential backup. Making a full backup and adding all cumulative changes to it per every routine. Less complex on the recovery then the incremental, however routine will be more time consuming.

Step 1: Decision making
First, decide on your ntbackup strategy. For most tasks, I do prefer incremental backup, since differential and full backups are time consuming. Also you might consider how stressful it is to the machine, but it all depends on the situation, so keep your mind open for all options. For example, if you do a backup daily and store it on a tape - it might be better to just to schedule a full backup. The reason for that, is so there would be no confusion which snapshot to take out if data recovery is neseccary.
Step 2: Configuring backup tool
As Administrator (or other privileged user) click on Start -> Run -> ntbackup
The tool will start in Wizard mode. I suggest to keep it this way for the first time. Select Backup Files and Settings, then Let me choose what to backup periodically:

Then select a backup location. It could be any place of your: your external drive, other partition, a tape drive, or God knows what. Then Click on Advanced:
Select your type of backup (Normal == Full). Set up extra options(e.g. you can verify backup after procedure is finished). If you do incremental or differential backup, make it append to the existing backups. Then in the section "When do you want to Run Backup" tick "Later", and schedule your ntbackup using the scheduled tasks. Once you click on 'Set Schedule' the Wizard should automaticallydisplay the proper window.
Set your schedule, in my case(above), I make it daily at 12:09 AM
Type your Windows User Accounts password.

Important! If you change your account's password your scheduled jobs will stop running. You'll have to go to every scheduled job you do and change it!

So, that's that - the backup is scheduled, and there's nothing much else to achieve with this technique.
Step 3. Monitoring the backup procedure
You might want to monitor your backup. First thing you want to do, especially for first couple of weeks is to see whether the job is working correctly. You can achieve this by viewing the backup reports. Go to ntbackup, and switch off wizard mode. Restart ntbackup, you should get interface like this:

Go to Tools -> Reports and select the report dated when the last backup procedure was expected. If the report looks similar to this, then it seems to work.
Otherwise look for errors. Also, if the report is blank, that would be a reason to worry, meaning backup didn't happen. Empty report could mean that the media is not in place, or it could be for some other reasons.
Another thing to check is Event Viewer in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools. Eventually look in System log there to check for any I/O errors, these usually indicate a failing media / hard disk, so just keep an eye on it.

Step 4. Recovering backup.
Go to ntbackup, and click on restore. Follow the wizard, if you have an incremental backup, click on all backups to restore, so that it will restore all data files, including the original full backup.
So this how you backup your data with free ntbackup software, which is shipped together with Windows system. There are certainly an advantage of using professional backup software like Acronis, TrueImage or Symantec Ghost, but this tool seem to do the job for most tasks. If you still not sure about something, just check the video below, it might clear things out.