I was looking into ways to easily back up my local SQL Server database from the command line, and copy the resulting backup to my fileserver. That way I could kick off a backup manually or from a scheduled task. There are a few articles out there but they’re more specific to SQL 2000 or earlier. Here’s how to do it for SQL Server 2005.

I first made directory c:sqlbackup and added a SQL script called backup.sql:

BACKUP DATABASE streamline TO DISK = 'c:sqlbackupstreamline.bak' WITH INIT
GO
BACKUP LOG streamline TO DISK = 'c:sqlbackupstreamline_log.bak' WITH INIT
GO

The above commands simply create log & database backups of the “streamline” database. I used the INIT parameter so that the backup files only create one version of the database (otherwise the backup files will grow & grow, containing every version of the database, each time you run a BACKUP command).

Then I made a simple batch file called backup.bat:

@echo off
REM get today's date and time as one big string
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%i in ( 'date /t') do set theday=%%k%%i%%j
for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=: " %%i in ( 'time /t') do set thetime=%%i%%j
set now=%theday%%thetime%

REM create backup files
C:
cd "Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL.1MSSQLBinn"
sqlcmd -S localhost -U sa -P somepassword -i c:sqlbackupbackup.sql -o c:sqlbackuplog.txt

REM copy backup files to backup device
xcopy "C:sqlbackup*.*" \10.1.10.50ben_backupsqlbackup%now% /E /H /R

The first section uses some DOS batch trickery to create a variable called %now% that contains the current day and time in the form of yyyymmddhhmm. The second section runs the backup script & writes the output to c:sqlbackuplog.txt. The last section copies the all the backup files to my fileserver, inside a date & time specific folder. Notice how I used the %now% variable in the xcopy destination parameter.

Now my backup folder contains timestamped folders containing everything I need to restore my “streamline” database. You can use a similar technique to make file backups.