Whats a good automated backup solution for a Windows based laptop?
 

I'm looking for suggestions on the best ways to automagically backup a Windows 11 based laptop, either daily, weekly or monthly.

How are you folks currently handling this please?

*edit* Should say preferably to an external SSD.

Just steal another identical laptop, and set them to sync with each other. That way, if one gets damaged / stolen / poo'd upon etc, you have a duplicate identical laptop to carry on without missing a beat...

Then simply steal another and repeat the poocess!

Simples :thumbsup

I think win 11 has something built in. It's called file history or something and then you syn the drive.

Create a .bat file, and have it run at X time, on X day and such.

## Example ##

## Explained

Line One:
This is not needed but I personally use it, this created a zip file of directly and everything inside of it in your source, then it drops that zip file in the folder of your secondary location, with the date in the name
** Make the destination folder different from your source!
Line Two: this is the copy command from the command line that copies everything in the source to the destination, the flags after it are what your looking for.
Read More: https://theserveradmin.com/robocopy-explained/

Line Three: Delete the created *.zip file in the source folder, not needed but I used this so I don't have a ton of backup zips created.

Hope this helps.

Depends what would you like to back up - your personal files, documents etc.. or you want to make an exact copy of your system drive..
I do both, backup important stuff daily via FBackup free version, then do a weekly image backup. My C: (system) drive is small in size (<250GB) so I create a system image to an external drive via 'Backup and Restore' in windows. So in case anything gets broken you can restore that image backup and you are good to go. Via the first option you will have to reinstall everything..

Use Microsoft Onedrive.

I do not use this myself because I work exclusively in the cloud these days, but my mother's PC crapped out and she lost all of the pictures she had scanned in over decades. Got her a new laptop and much to our surprise all of her photos and documents were automatically backed up to Onedrive.

It was a life saver.

Acronis makes a decent product

FreeFileSync?

https://freefilesync.org/

I've been using it for years and have never had an issue.

If you need an entire disk backup, this one works well and I've also been using it for years:

Drive Snapshot - Disk Image Backup for Windows