Heartily agree. Windows Backup is a button many come to regret simply pressing. For file backup, manual mirror syncing to clouds and drives, via Air Explorer, rclone etc. are safer, simpler and controllable.
Microsoft has included numerous programs over the years, that used to be available only from 3rd party vendors -- everything from graphical disk management tools, to antivirus / firewall tools. But Microsoft never really embraced a meaningful backup solution. It would be simplistic for Microsoft to include some basic backup functionality. In fact, they could make it profitable, by offering to enable additional features (automation, encryption, compression, password protection, file exclusion, drive cloning, etc) for a reasonable cost. Countless people would probably jump at the chance to backup their computers using native tools that were included with Windows. Anyone know why Microsoft has never made a concerted effort to include a robust backup solution with Windows (other than a token Windows 7 backup tool)?
It’s like the man who broke his arm, wished the bad arm could be made as good as the unbroken one, and ended up with two broken arms. Even Apple has a proper backup.
Leo has recommended Macrium Reflect and EaseUs as very good products in previous videos. I prefer EaseUs because it's VERY straight forward to use and is free. Macrium used to be free but not anymore.
There is the option of using or buying your own external storage devices and sticking all your files, software installers, and much more in there periodically rather than using any software-based solutions
Even more angry now. It also started to push its standard folders Documents, Pictures etc. down into the Onedrive on my phone until I stopped it. Now I get to fix this mess.
QUESTION: If you initiate "Windows Backup" (which also synchronizes documents across multiple Windows devices) and if you decide you don't need a file on one machine and delete it, does that delete cascade? I assume yes. but I assume Windows would warn you??? I think this will be very confusing for the average user that has 2 or more devices. FYI, on my PC and all my family's PCs I help build/setup/install the OS and software to get everything operating and then use a Mirroring software to create a pristine backup on a second NVMe we can simply swap if necessary (drive failure, OS just not repairable, etc.) as a new basis (I use Samsung Data Migration). I then also setup daily backups of their key Documents folders to separate storage (NAS, external drive, etc) so that they can simply copy all their files back too (I use SyncBackFree). Works great. It is rare you need a full system restore, but nice to have if needed. You may need to install a few apps but that is not that hard. It is good to have a backup of MyDocs (etc) that can be retrieved at any time . Losing documents/multimedia is not desired.
Files in onedrive are "synchonized", which means whatever you do to one, is replicated online and to all other machines using the same account. That's OneDrive's original purpose.
I learned a hard lesson a few years back ... NEVER backup your operating system or programs. There is a very real probability that you will be backing up bugs, viruses and dead files, all of which will simply reinstall the same problems when you restore it. If your system gets to the point it needs to be repaired, do a clean install. ALWAYS backup your data files. If you don't want to lose something make copies of it on an external drive that is not always connected to your system. This will keep them safe and restoring them is easy... just copy them back to your main system.
I couldn't disagree more. A full image backup of your system ensures that you never miss a file on your system. "Your data files" is ambiguous, and many people find out too late they didn't back up something they should have. As for malware, it's rarer than the other reasons you back up, but if you know it's there, then you can recover only your data files from a full image.
@@askleonotenboom Interesting. Thanks for the reply. I think it's a matter of organization. I know where all my data files are, because I build my own folder trees on a separate drive. System on C. Data on D... All I need do to back them up is copy all the files on D: to an external drive. Easy Peezy. (Some time ago I wrote an optimized tool to do this for me... it copies only files that have changed and removes orphans from the backups.) For the OS backup ... if you are 100% certain you have no malware or defective software, yes you can run a backup. But once you start using it and accumulating stuff in temp folders, disk caches, etc. it is very possible that renewing the backup you're going to end up with a backup of a virus or something equally hideous... so restoring your system simply puts the virus back in. I've always found it better and safer to just reinstall everything from the distribution archives. My routine tweaks and settings are all in script files so no big deal rea-applying them. I know it sounds arduous... but given that I ran win7 from a single install for more than 6 years and now have 2 years on this win10 install, it's really a fairly small trade off for increased safety.
I refuse to use OneDrive, maybe I'm too paranoid, and have never trusted Windows backup - been burnt before. I use Macrium and keep copies of my relevant hard disks. Frankly if it weren't for a couple of essential programmes, which aren't stable under Wine (or similar) I'd be full Linux. I'd prefer to run both Linux and Windows 10 Professional as virtual machines under a Linux 'hypervisor'.
Gee, it's so unlike MS to confuse and deceive its customers. I wouldn't trust MS to backup a tricycle in an empty mall parking lot without hitting something. I use EaseUS as per one of Leo's earlier recommendations.
I'm really angry this morning. After update last night windows walked me through steps, the last of which was for Onedrive. On that screen there was some plain blue text that said something like "Only save files on this PC". No checkbox, nothing, - so I thought "ok, it is already set for that" and just clicked continue. Boy was I wrong, it was a link I needed to click. Those sneaky @#$%.
@@askleonotenboom Yes hi. It didn't look like a link, so I (wrongly) assumed it was showing me my preexisting setting, which was no backup. Really misleading.
@@askleonotenboom fyi in the process of trying to push 500 gig into onedrive, it also broke/fillled up the "FileHistory" I had set on a dedicated drive that had been working fine forever... I looked and its config xml also now contains substituted pointers into onedrive for the standard Documents etc folders!
