Although you can manually back up your Informant database on a periodic basis, it's recommended that you also schedule regular backups of the Informant database and other Informant files.
Managing scheduled backups is beyond the scope of what our customer support can provide since there are a wide variety of ways to perform scheduled backups. However, this article will provide some general guidance for you or your IT staff.
You'll need to back up the database as well as other files related to Informant, such as attachments. Review What to back up for information about which files to back up.
Recommended: Use a third-party backup solution
We recommend using a third-party backup service or program that supports SQL Server backups, whether cloud-based or off-site, to create periodic backups of your Informant database.
One advantage of using a third-party backup solution is that a third-party backup solution can often also back up your other important files, such as your Informant attachments and other non-Informant files on your server, although some backup tools are specifically designed for backing up databases only (see What to back up to ensure you are also backing up other important files for Infomrant).
While we don't make specific recommendations for which vendor or product to choose, as long as the backup software supports SQL Server backups and can work with SQL Server Express, it is worth exploring.
Alternative: Scheduling database backups with Windows Task Scheduler
While we recommend using a third-party backup solution for simplicity, Microsoft has an article providing an example of how to automate SQL Server backups with a batch file and the Windows task Scheduler here: Schedule and automate backups of SQL Server databases in SQL Server Express
The information in this article can be used to create an automated backup if using a third-party backup solution is, for some reason, not feasible. That said, the solution in the articles does not delete old backups, so you will need to periodically delete old backup files to retain disk space if you use this solution. We only recommend this approach if there is a compelling reason not to use a third-party backup tool.
if using this option, remember to also back up other files used by Informant. See What to back up for more information.