Where are the ntbackup logs written on Windows 2003 when using at.exe?
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created: May 10, 2007
Updated: Aug 8, 2008
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/docs/ntbackuplogs2003.txt

[Additions, suggestions, corrections or thoughtful discussion always welcome.]

I run nightly differential backups with at.exe on a Windows 2003 SP1 server.

One day I saw an error in the Application logs about the backup and it
told me to check the logs.  My task was to find the logs.

A search turned up this page:

http://www.computing.net/windows2003/wwwboard/forum/1433.html

which correctly identified that the logs are here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\
Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\

but *only* if you run ntbackup interactively or from the command line
as Administrator.  The logs do not appear in that directory if you run 
it via at.exe.

**
Richard Snow was kind enough to point out that his logs show up under:

c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Local Settings\Application Data\
Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\

when using the scheduler in NTBackup on Windows Storage Server 2003 R2.
**

It turns out that logs for running NTBackup from at.exe are here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Application Data\
Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\

(Default User, not Administrator or All Users)

For the record, I tried to post a follow-up to the discussion listed above, 
but it was rejected as the thread was "too old," so I've put it here.

Thanks to user Ady_451 in that discussion for asking the original question
and then confirming that the logs were not being written to the Administrator
directory when at.exe was used.