For using ArkBackup Home to backup your data, the first step is to create a new task.

To create a new task, just click on the menu "File" - "Add task with wizard".

1. Then the New task wizard shows to guide you to create the new task. Firstly, specify a task name for the new task.
   
   
    
2. Then specify the Backup Source for the new task. It can be for backing up local files, Windows Registry keys, remote files(FTP), web files(HTTP) or just create backup from plug-ins.
   
   
    
3. If you specified to backup local files, the wizard will guide you to select the files/folders which you want to backup. A file filter also can be specified by clicking on the "File filter..." button.
   
   
   
   
   
   If you specified to backup Windows Registry keys, the wizard will guide you to specify which keys you want to backup.
   
   
   
   If you specifyed to backup remote files (FTP), the wizard will guide you to enter the FTP connection profile and select files/folders on the remote host.
   
    
   
   
   
   If you specified to backup web files (HTTP), the wizard will guide you to enter the URL of the web files.
   
   
   
   If you specified to create a backup task from plug-ins, then you don't need select files/folders/registry keys, since the plug-in will tell ArkBackup what it needs to backup.
    
4. Then, specify the Backup Method and Destination for the new task. You can specify to backup data to ArkBackup archive file (.abkf file), or compress data to ZIP file, or just copy the data to the destination folder and keep their original forms. The first option (backup to .abkf file) is recommended, since it can maximize the effect of ArkBackup features. At here, "Incremental Backup" type is applied for .abkf and "Fully Backup" type is applied for other methods (ZIP and Copy) automatically. You can change the backup type ("Incremental Backup" or "Fully Backup") when viewing task details. You also can set a password for the backup archive if your data is confidential.
   
   
   
   For "Fully Backup" type tasks (At here, means "ZIP" or "Copy" method"), you even can add a date stamp into the filename for the target backup archive. E.g. maybe you want to backup your data to the archive whoes name like "D:\My Backup\MyData_2009-03-24.zip" to show the create date of the archive. Obviously, The "Incremental Backup" type tasks can't and needn't use this feature.
   
   ArkBackup supports this. Just click the "..." button to show the "Save As" dialogue box and you can see the "Add date stamp to filename" option in the dialogue box as below. Make this option checked and you can specify the date format. "yyyy" means 4-digit year number and "yy" means 2-digit year number, "mm" means the month number for Jan. to Sep. with a leading zero(01-09) and "m" means the month number without a leading zero(1-9). "dd" and "d" are similar to "mm" and "m" but just for day number. And you can specify the date separator and the position of the date stamp in whole filename. Click on "Refresh" button can update the preview for your specified options.
   
   
   
   In this wizard, "Incremental Backup" type is applied for .abkf archive by default. If you want to change it to "Fully Backup" type, change it in the task details after this wizard.
    
5. Then click on the "Finish" button, a new task is created successfully.