The brand new Home windows Backup app and the restore course of connected to contemporary Home windows 11 huge fall updates confirms emotions I’ve held for a very long time: I simply can’t stand Microsoft’s strategy towards backing up my recordsdata within the cloud.
Home windows 11’s fall 2023 replace provides a brand new Home windows Backup app, which will be accessed from the Begin menu. Launch it, and Home windows guarantees to again up your folders, apps, settings, and credentials.
That’s easy sufficient. Supplied that you’ve got sufficient out there OneDrive storage, Home windows will copy these recordsdata into the cloud. In the event you purchase a brand new PC, the “out of the field” expertise (OOBE) guarantees to revive that backup on a brand new PC, primarily transferring your work or play surroundings to upgraded {hardware}. That’s the way it’s presupposed to work, anyway.
Sadly, Microsoft’s course of assumes that your PC consists solely of Microsoft apps downloaded from the Microsoft Retailer — and even then, doesn’t work because it ought to.
Additional studying: The perfect Home windows backup software program, free and paid
How you can use the Home windows 11 Home windows Backup app
To be secure, I up to date my authentic (which I’ll name the backup PC) PC to the present Home windows 11 model, after which requested for the most recent updates through Home windows Replace. I chosen two different PCs to revive (which I’ll consult with because the “goal” PCs) and up to date them, too. I then used the “Reset my PC” operate inside Home windows to wipe them clear, eliminating all private recordsdata, apps, and settings. I used the choice to revive Home windows utilizing the native copy already on the machine.
On the backup PC, I opened the Home windows Backup app. To its credit score, the Home windows Backup app is neatly designed. You possibly can open it from the Begin menu, by typing in “backup” and opening the advised app.
As soon as the app launches, you’ll be confronted with a small field along with your PC’s title in it, and the final time that this PC was backed up, if ever. You’ll even have 4 drop-down menus: Folders, Apps, Settings, and Credentials.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Underneath every, you’ll be requested to make some selections. Folders, for instance, checks to ensure you need to backup your PC’s desktop, plus the Pictures and Paperwork folder; Settings asks should you again up your Personalization settings; and so forth. The primary time I examined this, I allowed Home windows to make backups of every part. After I opened the Backup app a second time, the entire choices remained toggled on, with no choice to show them off. Additionally weirdly, I nonetheless don’t have the choice to robotically again up my movies within the cloud — regardless that Microsoft’s help web page tells me that I can.
When you make your strategies, you possibly can click on the “Again up” field on the backside of the app, and Home windows will go to work. Just be sure you’re related to the Web, and logged into OneDrive. (Though I didn’t particularly attempt, I wouldn’t count on that you just’d be capable to substitute a third-party service like Dropbox as a substitute.)
After a couple of minutes, it is best to discover that the Backup has robotically constructed a “backup” of your PC. The app appears to replace this backup robotically, however should you’re contemplating migrating to or including a brand new PC, it is likely to be value double-checking that the method has begun and/or accomplished.
Microsoft doesn’t formally name out the brand new “Restore” course of inside Home windows. It’s simply designed to be a part of the Home windows 11 setup expertise, as you step by way of the method: choosing a language, keyboard format, agreeing to the license phrases, after which choosing a community and getting into your Microsoft account info. Restoring a backup is carried out halfway by way of the method. Home windows affords you the choice of choosing the latest backup because the default, but in addition allows you to scroll by way of a listing of older backups or these from different machines. As you progress by way of the remainder of the setup course of — choosing your privateness settings, selecting your profile (leisure, gaming, productiveness and so forth) — the OOBE restore course of works within the background. Ultimately, you’ll be requested to attend as the ultimate steps are accomplished behind the scenes.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Don’t count on an excessive amount of. When Home windows emerged from its setup course of on my goal PC (a contemporary Samsung Galaxy Book2 Professional) it actually didn’t look something like my previous PC, which was sitting proper close by. And a number of the omissions had been surprisingly fundamental.
For one, I take advantage of Home windows Highlight to vary and personalize my PC’s desktop background. Home windows 11, for some motive, didn’t perceive this, opening a command immediate and biking by way of numerous efforts to presumably configure Highlight earlier than giving up. I used two goal PCs: the Galaxy Book2 Professional — and, only for enjoyable — an older Microsoft Floor Laptop computer Go, and neither might course of the Highlight choice.
I break up time between Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi. I’ve pinned Opera to my taskbar, and Home windows preserved that change.
The issue is that you just’d count on Home windows would simply do extra. We’ve had package deal managers like Chocolatey for greater than a decade, which will be configured to obtain and set up numerous functions within the background. If Microsoft does this, it doesn’t say. For one factor, my listing of Begin menu apps was poorly rendered, with what regarded like some kind of a standing message beneath every app, however obscured.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Some apps regarded like they had been downloaded as a part of the set up course of, however many weren’t. As you may count on, apps appeared as placeholders, and wanted to be clicked on to be downloaded and put in — and that solely labored in the event that they had been within the Microsoft Retailer. For the query avid gamers are asking: no, Steam wasn’t put in, and any video games that you just had downloaded with Steam (or Epic, or GOG, et cetera) weren’t both.
What I was stunned by, nevertheless, was {that a} sport, Warhammer III, that I had downloaded from the Microsoft Retailer on my backup PC neither downloaded and even provided to obtain on the goal PC. As an alternative, it informed me that I must purchase it from the Microsoft Retailer.
All of it felt a bit like when your first-grader volunteers to assist and also you spend as a lot time cleansing up after them than really doing the work.
What I hate about Home windows backup (with a small “b”)
What I more and more dislike about Microsoft’s backup technique is the truth that it merely desires to again up every part to the cloud: my recordsdata, paperwork, movies, and so forth — but in addition any benchmark software program, utilities, and so forth that I carelessly depart mendacity round. For years, I might merely go online with my private account and really feel pretty safe in the truth that I might simply drag a folder of benchmarks to a brand new laptop computer, block it from backing up the desktop, and go from there. (I discovered way back to not litter my desktop with piles of recordsdata, however I do use it as a touchdown pad for issues I’m attempting out.)
It appears, although, that Microsoft has develop into extraordinarily aggressive in the way it backs up information. I’ll open up a laptop computer and marvel why it’s so sluggish, then uncover that Microsoft is attempting to sync a file that was carelessly left on the desktop on one other machine.
I’ve one other bone to choose, too: placeholders. Microsoft desires to make sure I’ve shortcuts to each file I’ve ever uploaded, and to point out them each time I open, say, the Photos folder.
If I snap a screenshot, do I actually need to must pore by way of years of archived photographs and different screenshots simply to search out the one I need? I’d choose my recordsdata (on this case, my paperwork and photographs) to again as much as OneDrive, however with out the necessity to navigate by way of all of the visible cruft of recordsdata which are already saved to the cloud. If I need to discover a file, I can go to the OneDrive folder. That’s why I choose treating every new laptop computer as its personal entity, and minimizing OneDrive’s backup as a lot as doable.
The purpose is that I would really like Home windows Backup and Restore to helpfully obtain and set up the apps that I do need. As an alternative, Microsoft appears decided to sync and obtain recordsdata that I don’t need. Since Backup and Restore doesn’t appear to unravel my downside, again I’ll go to managing PCs on a person foundation, moderately than a cohesive entire.
