Windows Backup

Despite its name and Microsoft’s posturing, Windows Backup is not a comprehensive PC backup and restore solution. Instead, it is a collection of longtime Windows features with a newly centralized user interface that does very little and requires you to sign in with a Microsoft account (MSA).

Defaults

Microsoft claims that Windows Backup allows you to back up a wide range of items, including files, themes, settings, installed apps, and Wi-Fi information. But all of that is incorrect or exaggerated, and none of it is new to Windows Backup.

Here’s what Windows Backup–or, really, Windows 11 when you sign-in with an MSA–does with that information.

• Files. You can optionally sync–not back up–some of your important files with OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. To do so, you must enable OneDrive Folder backup and work within the confines of the small set of folders that feature uses. Or, you must work within the OneDrive file system structure and manually configure files to sync.
• Themes. When you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, it saves details about the theme you’ve configured, including the background, the sound scheme, the color scheme, and the mouse cursor.
• Settings. When you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, it saves some of the many Windows 11 settings you configured, but it’s a tiny subset of the available settings.

Learn more: Microsoft documents the settings it backs up on the Microsoft Support website.

• Installed apps. Windows 11 does not back up your apps. When you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, it saves a list of the names of the apps you installed and those apps you’ve pinned to Start or the Taskbar.
• Wi-Fi information. When you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, it saves the credentials–the name (SSID) and associated password–for each secure Wi-Fi network you successfully connect to.

If you sign in to Windows 11 with an MSA, most of that will happen automatically. The one exception is files backup, which occurs via a OneDrive feature called Folder backup. In some cases, Windows 11 may try to enable this feature automatically, in which case your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders, and all their contents, sync between that PC and the OneDrive cloud storage service. If OneDrive Folder backup is enabled, then that sync also happens automatically.

Storage may be a concern. Microsoft provides just 5 GB of free cloud storage in OneDrive, and that may not be enough to store your backups. If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium subscription, you have 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage available to you.

Of course, backing up the PC–or just some of the information on the PC, as is the case with Windows Backup–is only half the job. The other half is restoring that data. And here, Windows Backup also falls flat: There is no way to arbitrarily restore any of the files, themes, settings, installed apps, or Wi-Fi information that Windows Backup protects. Instead, you can only restore this data when you set up a new Windows 11 PC or reset an existing PC: This happens in the Windows Setup Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) and at no other time.

Likewise, you can’t see, manage, or change anything in your “backups.” All you can do is overwrite the current backup with a new one and customize what gets backed up at a very high level.

Don’t get me wrong, Windows Backup isn’t entirely useless. It’s just borderline useless.

Customize

You can customize what Windows Backup backs up in the Settings app by navigating to Accounts > Windows backup.

There are only three relevant options here:

• OneDrive folder syncing. Click the “Set up syncing” button to open the “Back up folders on this PC” dialog from OneDrive and determine which, if any, of the five folders OneDrive Folder backup can sync is synced to the cloud.
• Remember my apps. This option determines whether your Microsoft account remembers which apps you installed and pinned on this PC.
• Remember my preferences. This option determines whether Windows 11 saves some settings configurations and Wi-Fi credentials to your Microsoft account. You can also expand this option to configure whether accessibility; accounts and Wi-Fi networks and passwords; personalization; language preferences and dictionary; and other Windows settings sync individually.

Create a backup

You can only store one backup for each PC you use. So when you create a backup or the system makes one automatically, it overwrites the previous backup.

To create a backup manually, open Windows Backup. Before continuing, be sure to expand the “Folders” group as Windows Backup will attempt to enable sync with five of your folders–not just Desktop, Documents, and Pictures, but also Music and Videos for some reason–and you may not want that.

The other three groups, for Apps, Settings, and Credentials, cannot be configured here. For that, you must first navigate to Windows backup settings in the Settings app as noted previously.

If you are ready to make a backup, click “Continue.” Windows Backup will display a “Backing up your PC…” screen while it monitors the backup. When it’s done, Windows Backup will report that you are backed up or, if you disabled one or more folder backups, “partially backed up.”

Click “Close” to move on with your life. Or, briefly ponder what it is you just did here. After all, Windows 11 automatically syncs your OneDrive folders and backs up your apps, settings, and credentials anyway. What advantage is there to creating a backup with this app?

There are two, both minor.

• There is a peace of mind element, as noted in the app itself, because making a backup explicitly means you don’t need to worry about it happening automatically in the background.
• It’s not clear when things happen automatically in the background: When you click “Back up,” you know the backup is there now and is up-to-date.

Restore from a backup

There is no way to use Windows Backup or any other interface to restore any of the backed-up data while using Windows 11. Instead, you restore from a backup when setting up a new PC or any other time when you find yourself stepping through the Windows Setup Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE).

If you sign in to Windows 11 using your Microsoft account (MSA), the OOBE will prompt you to “restore your backups saved on your previous PC,” which is wrong twice: You can restore from a single backup and that backup is saved in the cloud, not on your previous PC.

This initial screen displays your most recent backup. From here, you can:

• Restore from the current backup. Click “Continue” to accept the selected backup and restore its folders, apps, settings, and credentials.
• Restore from a different backup. Click “More options” to select a different backup from a collection of your PC backups listed in reverse chronological order.

• Set up the PC without restoring from a backup. Click “More options” to display the same screen as above, but then click “Set up as a new PC.” In this case, Windows Setup will warn you that you won’t be able to restore from your backups later.

This raises an interesting point: Since your Microsoft account automatically syncs the contents of your OneDrive storage via your Microsoft account and automatically backs up your apps, settings, and credentials information anyway, what’s the difference between restoring from a backup and setting up as a new PC?

There is only one difference unless you go to the trouble of configuring Windows Backup differently on different PCs: Setting up as a new PC will not restore your installed apps and their pin preferences. To gain this one benefit, you need to restore from the appropriate backup. It’s the only way.

And to be clear, there is nothing about a backup that is literally specific to a certain PC. If you own a PC and back it up with Windows Backup, you can restore from that backup using any other PC with no worries. It will work fine.

Manage your backups

There’s no way to manage backups in the Windows Backup. But there are three other places you can visit to do so:

• OneDrive settings. OneDrive Folder Backup is configured in OneDrive settings: Navigate to “Sync and backup” and click the “Manage backup” button to see which folders are being synced and, optionally, configure it as you prefer.
• Windows backup settings. Apps, settings, and credentials backup are all configured here. Open the Settings app and navigate to Accounts > Windows backup.

Tip: Any changes you make here will reflect in the Windows Backup app and in the resulting backup, of course. For example, if you expand “Remember my preferences” and set “Accessibility” to “Off,” and then open Windows Backup and expand “Settings,” the Accessibility item will display with an On/Off toggle, hopefully set to “On,” so you can change it back if desired.

• Microsoft account website. To view your backups, sort of, open the Microsoft account website with a web browser, sign in, and navigate to the Devices page. Here you will see a list of the PCs that are linked to your Microsoft account, each of which has an associated backup. All you can do here is remove a device from your account, which deletes its associated backup. To do so, expand the PC in the listing and click “Remove device.”

The Devices page on the Microsoft account website noted above also has a Cloud synced settings area down at the bottom that lets you remove certain settings–saved Wi-Fi credentials, language preferences, and app lists–from your MSA and thus from all your PCs. If you wish to clear all this data, click “Clear synced settings.”