The importance of creating redundant copies of essential data was something I learned shortly after putting together my first PC, and my backup-hoarding tendencies only grew once I stepped into the home lab ecosystem. While maintaining regular backups of my server rigs and their virtual guests is pretty simple (I have PBS to thank for that), the situation is a bit different when it comes to my Windows 11 PCs.
That’s because the backup tools built into Microsoft’s flagship OS have let me down so many times that I’d rather not use them at all. In fact, I had to tinker with several applications and utilities before I finally managed to cobble together a backup pipeline that stores essential files, including user data, on my Network-Attached Storage server.
The backup utilities baked into Windows 11 are extremely unreliable
Windows Backup, File History, and System Restore have plenty of annoying quirks
If you’re wondering why I despise the default backup tools on Windows 11, let me go over my complaints with each one. Contrary to what you’d think from the name, Windows Backup only saves certain folders, settings, and app lists to OneDrive. Assuming you’ve downloaded an app from the Windows Store (and that’s one heck of an assumption considering how useless the Windows Store is these days), it simply saves its name and position on the Start menu instead of the data (or even the app itself). For apps downloaded from external sources, you’re completely on your own. And for privacy-conscious folks such as myself, Windows Backup won’t work when you have a local user that’s not connected to a Microsoft account.
File History used to be pretty neat back in Windows 8 (and the same applies to its predecessor, Shadow Copy, from Windows 7), but Microsoft decided to turn it into a legacy application in Windows 11. Now, it’s still possible to access this app on the latest version of Windows 11 (as of writing, that is), but I’d have to manually add new folders to the Library if I want File History to sync them.
But here’s the thing: I tend to install new apps, including GitHub packages, practically every week on my system, which makes managing all the folders I’ve added to the Library a royal pain. And this might just be a me problem, but every time I add/remove a couple of folders to the Windows Library, the File Explorer crashes for no apparent reason (and this happened even when I took the screenshots for this article).
Then there’s System Restore, which has let my fledgling self down more times than I can count. And I’m not going to talk about its inability to safeguard personal files, either. It’s the fact that I can’t create a permanent restore point that really aggravates me. Yes, I can massively increase the amount of storage allocated to the System Restore functionality, but I’ve had Windows delete a stable restore point several times over the years, to the point where I eventually gave up on it and switched to a local snapshot (and dedicated backup) pipeline.
I rely on Kopia to create snapshots of essential files
But Borg is a decent option, too
Compared to Windows’ lackluster backup tools, Kopia’s snapshot functionality is perfect for safeguarding everything from project files to AppData and random application directories. For one, Kopia doesn’t force me to store files on OneDrive (even though it supports cloud snapshots just fine), so I can point to an SMB share on my NAS and have the app work its magic. Between its compression algorithms and deduplication facility, I don’t have to worry about my snapshots taking up too much space, especially when it comes to projects involving the same set of packages.
Likewise, since Kopia snapshots are incremental in nature, they’re usually wrapped up in a couple of minutes – not just for my local pipeline, mind you. My TrueNAS server sends these incremental snapshots to a remote storage hub every month, which takes a fraction of the time as full-fledged backups. I also adore how quickly Kopia can recover files. Rather than taking several minutes like Windows 11’s backup tools, Kopia lets me restore individual files from backup repositories in a matter of seconds. Borg is another neat app that’s pretty handy, especially with community-created UIs, but I prefer Kopia’s interface for my snapshot tasks.
Meanwhile, Veeam is better for full-on redundant backups
Considering that Kopia only supports snapshots, this article won’t be complete unless I go over my dedicated backup utility. I used to be a Macrium Reflect fanboy when it was free, but I’ve since moved on to Veeam for creating full-fledged backups of my Windows drives. While its free version only lets me execute one backup job, it works really well with network shares, local drives, and external storage media.
