Historical article
- Original title: Automating SQL Express Backups
- Author: Brian Knight
- Original publication date: August 13, 2006
- Originally published on: White Knight Technology
- Preservation note: This article preserves the description of the backup package recovered from the Wayback snapshot.
Archive provenance: White Knight Technology Historical Archive
SQL Express provided a free SQL Server edition that could be distributed with applications. Many third-party applications used it, or its SQL Server 2000 counterpart MSDE, as their data repository. A user might not even know it was installed because it added nothing to the Programs menu. A major limitation of SQL Express was its lack of a scheduling tool.
The original download offered a canned backup solution made up of three files:
BackupExpress.sqlperformed most of the work, backing up every database on the instance excepttempdb.BackupExpress.cmdran the script and required the instance name as an argument.ScheduleBackups.cmdscheduled the job withATand also required the instance name, withScheduleBackups.cmd .\SQLExpressgiven as the example.
The same overall approach could be used with MSDE by changing SQLCMD to OSQL in the batch file; the remaining syntax was not specific to SQL Server 2005.
The instructions were to start the Task Scheduler service, extract all three files to the root of the C drive, and run the schedule file from a command prompt. The deliberately simple solution exposed little configuration. It retained seven days of backup history, then continually overwrote the previous week's backup. Brian noted room for improvement and identified index rebuilds as the main missing feature.
The original evidence links were BackupExpress.zip and the JumpstartTV deployment video.
Recovery limitations
The archived article describes the package, but the downloadable ZIP, its executable script contents, and the video have not been recovered here. The filenames and behavior above are limited to what the article verifies; no missing script contents or additional files have been invented.
2026 Update
The old downloadable package and its C-drive batch-file approach are historical. Any current backup automation requires appropriate credential and filesystem security, protected off-host retention, monitoring, and documented restore validation. A scheduled job is not a dependable backup process until restores have been tested.