we have a server here and i want to back it up daily to a USB HDD.
is there anyway of automating this at all?

I use this:

Storage Craft - Shadow Protect Server - Free 30day trial

There is also a desktop edition.

tried just using "sheduled tasks" which comes with M$ windows?

I use Robocopy via Scheduled Tasks for 15 different fileservers.

I haven't used Robocopy for a while .... do you still need to manually create a batchfile to configure how it copies the data between the source & destination .... eg .... create log files, copying NTFS file securitys, mirroring/purging directory trees etc?

Yep, but I like that level of configurability.
I forgot to mention that it's a fairly complex command-line tool, but there has been a GUI made for it (the download includes and installs robocopy itself): http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d...ight2006_11.exe

You can either do this as a 'once off' or it can generate a script for you, which you can schedule as a task.

Fudd, are you just backing up files, or will you be doing the operating system / system state as well?

Robocopy doesn't have any option to do a system state backup, like NT Backup does, nor does it support Volume Shadow copying (files that are in use all the time, like a SQL database).
'Hobocopy' does make use of the Volume Shadow Service, but isn't as full featured as Robocopy:http://www.pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Craig/HoboCopy.html

Might still suit you though.