AOMEI Backupper Help Guides

Regular backups are very useful in everyday use scenarios and the following are some common everyday use scenarios:

• Work file backups: It is important to back up your work files regularly, especially for jobs that involve important projects, reports, documents and data. This will prevent accidental data loss, file corruption or problems caused by incorrect operations.
• Personal file backups: Regular backups of your personal files are important to protect your photos, videos, music, documents and other personal data. This way, even if your device is lost, damaged or stolen, you can still restore these valuable personal files from your backups.
• Home media backup: If you have a large number of home photos, videos or music files, backing up these media files regularly ensures their security and reliability. This way, even if your storage device is damaged or files are lost, you can still easily restore these precious memories.

Regular backups play a key role in these everyday use scenarios, ensuring that your data and files are always protected and providing the ability to recover in the event of an unexpected event or data loss. Whether you are an individual user or a business user, regular backups are essential to maintain data security and reliability.

Create a Scheduled Backup in Windows 10 in Two Situations

Prerequisites for Schedule Backup 

• Download and install AOMEI Backupper: Begin by downloading and installing AOMEI Backupper on the computer that you wish to back up. 
• Determine the backup method: AOMEI Backupper offers various backup options, such as system backup, disk backup, file backup, and more.
• Choose the appropriate backup method based on your requirements.
• Verify sufficient free space on the target device: Each scheduled backup will create a new backup image file. Ensure that the target device, such as an external hard drive or network storage, has enough free space to accommodate multiple backup image files. 

Situation 1: No Backup Task is Created

If you have not created any system backup tasks, click "Backup" and select "System Backup" to bring you to the System Backup screen. For System Backup, AOMEI Backupper will automatically list partitions that are related to the system to boot, and you can see the "Schedule" option.

After you configure the schedule settings, you can click the "Start Backup" button: either select "Add the schedule and start backup now" or "Only add the schedule". If you choose "Only add the schedule", the backup will not run at present but the scheduled backup task will be added to the "Home" tab, waiting to run at the scheduled backup time point.

Situation 2: Task has been Created but not Enabled Schedule

If you have already created a backup task but have not enabled the "Schedule" feature, you can enable it as shown in the picture below.

How to Enable or disable scheduled backup

To enable or disable a scheduled backup, you can simply find the scheduled backup settings as mentioned above and then activate or deactivate the button "Enable Schedule Backup". Once you activate the button under one backup task, the task will run as scheduled. After you deactivate the button under a scheduled backup task, the task will not be scheduled.

Backup Methods for a Scheduled Backup

There are three backup methods: Full Backup, Incremental Backup, and Differential Backup. As for the differences between the three backup methods, please refer to Differences between Backup Methods.

To configure a backup method for a scheduled backup task, you need to enter the "Backup Scheme" tab and then select the desired backup method. "Incremental Backup" is the default backup method.

After you select the backup method, the program will automatically run the backup task in this kind of backup method only. If you select the incremental backup as the backup method but would like to separately run a differential/full backup sometimes, you can click the three-line button in the backup management, click "Backup", and select the necessary differential/full backup method to manually run the task.

Tips:

If you want to enable the Backup Scheme function to automatically delete backup images (paid feature), you can also enable it in this section. Please check how to Enable and Configure Backup Scheme.

Schedule Backup Modes

In AOMEI Backupper, seven schedule modes are available: Daily (By Interval) Mode, Daily Mode, Weekly Mode, Monthly (By Week) Mode, Monthly (By Date) Mode, One-Time Mode, and Event Triggers.

1. Daily (By Interval) Mode

• Set intervals of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 hours within the selected time frame each day.
• Set a start time and a finish time to perform the backup task.

2. Daily Mode

• Set a future time point to perform the backup task once each day.

3. Weekly Mode

• Choose a specific day(s) for the backup task from Monday to Sunday.
• Set a time point, and the program will automatically perform the backup at this time on the chosen day(s) every week.

4. Monthly (By Week) Mode

• Set a start time point. The program will automatically perform the backup at the given time point.
• Specify one day each month to perform the backup task. For example, perform the backup on the third Tuesday of each month.

5. Monthly (By Date) Mode

• Set a start time point. The program will automatically perform the backup at the given time point.
• Choose the day(s) from the calendar to perform the backup task each month. Multiple days can also be selected on the calendar.

6. One-Time Mode

• Set a future time point to perform the backup task only once.

For Daily (By Interval), Daily, Weekly, Monthly (By Week), Monthly (By Date), and One-Time Mode scheduled backup tasks, Backupper can currently wake up the computer to perform the tasks. You can tick the option "Wake the computer to run scheduled tasks" to configure it. In this way, the program will wake your computer from sleep or hibernate 2 minutes before running a scheduled backup. This feature is unavailable for Event Triggers scheduled tasks.

And, for Daily (By Interval), Daily, Weekly, Monthly (By Week), Monthly (By Date), and One-Time Mode scheduled backup tasks, Backupper currently can be set up to Shut down, Restart, Hibernate, or Sleep PC after the scheduled task is completed. You can drop down the option of "After the scheduled task is completed, the computer will" and then choose one option to configure it. In this way, the program will automatically perform Shut down/Restart/Hibernate/Sleep operations after the scheduled task is completed, and the countdown is 3 minutes. This feature is unavailable for Event Triggers scheduled tasks.

7. Event Triggers

There are five event trigger types offered by AOMEI Backupper: USB plug in, User logon, User logoff, System startup, and System Shutdown. Please note that the Event triggers mode is available in paid versions only, such as AOMEI Backupper Professional. Please upgrade to the professional version if necessary. For more detailed info about how "Event Triggers" works, please see Windows backup on logoff.

a. USB plug in: When the program detects that the source or target USB device of the backup task is plugged in, it will automatically back up the data from the USB device or back up to the USB device.
If "Run one time every day" is selected, then the backup task will run only once a day.
When you insert the USB device after USB tasks are created, it will pop up "USB Plugged in" window with information "AOMEI Backupper has detected a USB device plugged in and will run the following tasks associated with the USB device. Please confirm how you would like to proceed", you can select to run tasks immediately or delay 15/30/60 minutes to perform or skip tasks. And, you can check "Do not show this dialog again" so that the tasks can be performed immediately every time.

b. User logon: Set up to perform a backup automatically when the user has logged in. Once you log into any user account (administrator or standard), the backup task is performed immediately. If you log into an administrator account, you will see a small AOMEI Backupper system tray icon showing the backup progress in the bottom right corner of the desktop. However, if it is a standard account being used, the backup task is performed in the background without the system tray icon visible.

c. User logoff: Set up to perform backup automatically when the user is logged off. Once you log off any user account (administrator or standard), the backup task is performed in the background immediately. If the backup has not been completed after you log in again, it still continues to run. If you log into an administrator account, you can see a small AOMEI Backupper system tray icon showing the backup progress. If you shut down the PC before the backup has been completed, AOMEI Backupper will prevent the system from shutting down and then continue to complete the backup first. After that, the system will shut down automatically.

d. System startup: Set up to perform backup automatically when a system startup occurs. Once the system has started up, even though you have not yet logged on and reached the desktop, the backup task will run in the background immediately. If the backup hasn't been completed after you reach the desktop, it will still continue to run. An AOMEI Backupper system tray icon shows the backup progress if you logged in via an administrator account. If you shut down the PC before the backup is complete, AOMEI Backupper will prevent the system from shutting down and then continue to complete the backup first. After that, the system will shut down automatically. In addition, you can set a time delay before performing the backup task. For instance, you could set a 5-minute delay, so the backup task starts to run 5 minutes after system startup.

e. System shutdown: Set up to perform backup automatically when the system shuts down. When you click “shut down”, AOMEI Backupper will prevent the system from shutting down in order to perform the backup first. Backup status information is displayed and once complete, the system will proceed to shut down as normal. Please note that if a system update is running after clicking "shut down", the backup will run after the system update has been completed.

Advanced Schedule Settings

In the Schedule "Advanced" settings, you can tick "Run the missing backup after starting computer next time" so a missed backup will run at the next system startup if the PC is shut down before the scheduled backup time point.

Also, you can directly specify Windows Task Scheduler to perform this scheduled task.

Notes:

• If the PC shuts down directly without doing the backup when the "System Shutdown" event trigger has been enabled, please disable the "fast startup" option under Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\System Settings. And, if you configure the "System Shutdown" event trigger, the backup will also run when the PC is set to restart. AOMEI Backupper will prevent the system from shutting down in order to perform the backup first. After the backup is finished, the PC will shut down and restart.
• If the task is enabled with Event Triggers, it is unable to manually specify either Windows Task Scheduler or AOMEI Service to perform this task. And, "Run the missing backup after starting the computer next time" is also unavailable.

Conclusion

Scheduled backups offer many benefits, including data security, disaster recovery, fast data recovery, personal file protection, simplified system migration and upgrades, file version control, and data integrity and consistency. By performing regular scheduled backups, you can protect your data and ensure system reliability and continuity.

FAQs

Q: When you configure "System Startup" in "Event Trigger" and set "Operation starts delay 2 minutes" to run a scheduled backup, the backup will only run in case of system hot start, not in system cold start?

A: For cold start and hot start, we advise you to disable the "fast startup" option under Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\System Settings. In this case, both in system cold and hot start, Backupper will run scheduled backups normally.

 

Q: The "User Logon" is configured in "Event Triggers", but the backup does not run after the account logs on.

A: Please check if the anti-virus program is installed on your computer. If yes, the anti-virus program may prevent the program from running normally. In this case, you can try to disable the anti-virus program. Or, you can add the AOMEI folder to the whitelist of the anti-virus program and then check again.

 

Q: When the "USB Plug In" event backup does not execute automatically when you connect a USB flash drive or external drive via USB connector, even though you have configured "USB Plug In" event backup in AOMEI Backupper?

A:  Please check if the USB flash drive or external drive connected via USB connector is encrypted. If it is encrypted, it is currently unable to execute backups automatically in AOMEI Backupper. In this case, we advise you to decrypt the drive and then retry.

 

Q: Why is the "Wake the computer to run scheduled tasks" function configured, but the PC is not awakened to run the backup?

A: Please check the items below:

1) Please check if you have enabled "fast startup" mode. If yes, please disable the "fast startup" option under Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\System Settings.

2) Please check if your computer is powered off. If yes, it is unable to wake the computer up.

3) If you are using a laptop, please check if the lid of the laptop is open. Please do not close the lid of the Laptop.

4) Please open the Windows Task Scheduler. Then, find the schedule created in the Task and Scheduler library. Then right-click the schedule-> Properties -> Condition to see if the option "Wake the computer to run this task" is checked. If not, please tick and test again.

If the problem persists, please contact our AOMEI Support Team and explain what kind of schedule backup you configured, and attach the log folder under the installation directory of AOMEI Backupper to further analyze and fix this issue.

 

Q: Why can’t I see the small tray of AOMEI Backupper when the scheduled backup is performed with the standard account?

A: AOMEI Backupper needs to acquire the administrator’s permission to run the interface program, while only using system permissions to run the backup. The small tray is a part of the interface program. Under the standard account, AOMEI Backupper can’t get the administrator’s permission to run the interface program, and so the scheduled backup will be performed without the small tray.