Want to get my easy to follow Tech Tips in your email?
Sign up for my daily Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter!
If you’ve been using computers for a while you probably know that a hard drive or SSD failure, a horrible virus infection or some other catastrophic event can result in data loss.
If that ever happens you, you’ll need to be able to restore the drive’s contents from a backup.
The question is, which backup software should you use to create your backups?
While there are many good commercial backup software programs available (some of which are free), Windows 11 has a handy backup tool already built-in to the operating system.
It’s called System Image Backup, and it generally works quite well.
In a nutshell, creating a System Image Backup essentially makes an exact copy of everything that’s currently stored on the drive.
That includes Windows 11 itself and all installed programs and apps along with all of your photos, your ‘Office’ files and every other file that happens to reside on the drive at the time the backup is created.
That means if a drive failure or some other catastrophic event wipes out all of your data you can easily restore the machine from your most recent backup and quickly get everything back to the same state it was in at the time the backup was created.
As luck would have it, it’s very easy to create a System Image Backup on your Windows 11 PC. Just follow the steps below:
1 – Connect an external hard drive or SSD that’s large enough to store the contents of the drive you plan to back up to your computer.
2 – Click the Start button and then immediately type the words control panel.
3 – Select Control Panel from the list of search results after it pops up.
4 – Click System and Security.
5 – Click File History.
6 – Click the System Image Backup link in the lower left-hand corner of the window.
7 – Click the Create a system image link in the left-hand column. Windows will now perform a quick scan and list the currently available backup drives.
8 – Select the external hard drive or SSD you want to save the backup file to from the drop-down list in the “on a hard disk” section.
9 – Click Next.
10 – Click the Start backup button.
That’s all there is to it. The System Image tool will create a System Image backup file and save it onto the designated external drive.
After the process is complete you should disconnect the backup drive from your PC and store it in a safe place (in a fireproof lock box, for example).
Now if the need ever arises you’ll be prepared to restore your system back to the state it was in at the time that backup was created.
Just be aware that any files that were saved or created after the most recent backup was made will be lost if something happens to wipe out your files.
Therefore it’s very important that you make frequent backups if you tend to save or create new files on a regular basis.
Bonus tip: Want to learn a lot more about how Windows 11 works (and make it work better for you)? Check this out. (#ad)