I wish to perform daily/weekly/fortnightly/monthly back up using many tapes through the standard 2003 server backup utility at 11pm. When using the scheduler i understood that you can only use ONE tape per schedule since it defines the tape label in the wizard. To use multi tapes do i have to create a new schedule for each tape or is there a way to create ONE schedule and use many tapes for the same one. Please advise, if the latter is true can someone please tell me how this is done?

you might be better off buying a third party backup software like BackExec or ArcServeIT. You have alot more control over media pools.

Ntbackup works just fine once you know how to use it. The following link explains how to Schedule unattended backups with either managed or unmanaged backup sets. My preference is unmanaged as they don't require labelling the tapes. This is a lot easier to work with and in the case of long weekends when there's nobody there to change the tapes, the backup runs and just overwrites the tape in the drive. Unlike a managed set which would complain because the properly labelled tape isn't in the drive.....and no backup would be performed. One thing to note when creating an unmanaged backup set that isn't mentioned in the article. Adding the /um switch to the command line within ntbackup doesn't work. You have to create a batchfile, copy the command which runs the backup from the backup's properties to the batchfile, add the /um switch there and then create a scheduled task to run the batchfile. It might sound a little complex, but it actually works quite well once you figure out how to make it work properly. I used that batchfile as a basis for my own backups at home which differ in that I'm backing up to a hard drive. In the case of my wife's computer and laptop and my spare PC's and my son's PC, the batchfile maps a network drive to my main PC, performs the backup then copies the backup file to my main PC and then disconnects that mapping. Once a week I backup the \backup folder on my main PC that contains all the backups for our PC's onto a DVD-RW (I have several and alternate them). Anyhow, it can and will work for you at no added expense (ie: you don't have to buy a 3'd party backup program) if you're willing to learn how to use it.

Thanks for your help fellas, i have set up an unmanaged schedule for now and it is successful. I work for a charity so this has saved us money from buying industry standard back up software. This process will do for now untill our data and requirements grow :)