Backup - ArkBackup works with the project based concept. With ArkBackup, you need to:

1. At first, create a new project with its tasks.
   
   Task means a single backup job. E.g. backup some local files or folders on your disk, or backup some keys in Windows Registry, etc.
   
   Project means an operation unit. It can include one or multiple related tasks.
   
   E.g. you need to backup data and settings of Microsoft Outlook. In general, you need to backup .pst files for keeping data, and backup related keys in Windows Registry for keeping its settings. Now you can create a project named "Outlook backup", then create two tasks for backing up .pat data files and Registry keys respectively. Organize these two tasks in one project, since they are integrative. When backing up or restoring, a project is an operation unit. The two tasks will be executed together, since they are integrative. And you also can set properties for the project, e.g. a running schedule, etc.
   
   Additionally, ArkBackup allows to organize projects with categories.
    
2. Then you can set the run schedule for newly created project.
   ArkBackup provides a flexible scheduler so that you can specify when to backup for a project.
   
   *Above steps, can be done with the New Project Wizard.
    
3. At any time, you can also run a project immediately.
   
   * When a project is running, you can't close ArkBackup directly. The running projects must be terminated firstly.
   * You can run multiple projects at the same time.
    
4. When a project finishes, ArkBackup will generate a report and pop up a notification message. And the backup archive file will be generated and saved at the location you specified.
   In backup archive file, all of your data are organized by "timing catalog" and "disk trees". This make it easier to find something for you.

Restore - When restoring, you can open the backup archive file with ArkBackup. In the viewer, you can see the timing catalog and the disk trees under it. There will be multiple timing catalogs if you set the Backup Type as "Incremental" for the task.

• the incremental backup backs up the whole sources at the first time, and then only backs up the changed files since last backup. This can decrease the amount of backup time obviously. One source file can be backed up time after time if it was modified before next backup. Then it will has multiple "versions" in the backup archive. Each "version" of the file is backed up in different timing catalog. This mean you can get any "version" of this source file from the backup archive file if you want.

ArkBackup allows you restore data in four modes:

1. Full restore - Restore all up-to-date data from the archive file
2. Timing catalog restore - Restore the data of a specified timing catalog
3. Tree restore - Restore the data of a specified tree under a timing catalog
4. Single item (file or registry key) restore - Restore a selected item only