Microsoft Exchange 2000 Backup

Performing a backup of Microsoft Exchange has always been a royal pain. Because Exchange used it's own special data files and those files were always open (because email is never down), it was difficult to find a way to make copies of the files for backup or archive purposes. At work we solved the problem by using a package called Backup Exec (by Veratas) - and this worked reasonably well for Exchange 5.5 and before.

When I installed Exchange 2000 I discovered, quite by accident, a nifty little utility called NTBACKUP. You execute it from the CMD prompt (or the RUN command) by entering NTBACKUP. This results in the screen below:

Performing the Backup

To perform a backup of the exchange database, click the "Backup Wizard" button. This will result in the display of a welcome screen - click next to continue. Next, you will be asked what you want to back up - select "Backup up selected files, drives or network data".

Now, select the items to back up. Navigate to the exchange information store and check it.

Now select where to store the data. I like this backup utility because it allows the output to be on a network store (as shown below), a disk or just about any other device.

Click Advanced to set any additional options. Once you are done and have verified this is what you want to do, then click finish.

Once you click finish the backup will start.

That's all there is to the backup step.

You can now restore the data at your leisure.