WIN10

Configure automatic backups in Windows 7, 8 and 10

The built-in Backup and Restore in Windows 7, 8 (not 8.1!) and 10 suits you in case you do not need to protect your backups with passwords or encryption, or you do not have hard disks in RAID.

This is a simple solution for automatic backups. You can encrypt the whole target disk with BitLocker or create a TrueCrypt container instead for added protection - but this will reduce performance of backups.

For encrypted and password-protected backups, use free AOMEI Backupper instead. This also applies to Windows 8.1 that has no traditional backup program.

Automating backups in Windows 7, 8 and 10

In Windows 10, open Start menu or Cortana keyboard search (WINDOWS KEY+S), type "backup" and choose Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

In Windows 8, open Settings search using keyboard shortcut WINDOWS KEY+W, type "windows 7" and click Windows 7 File Recovery.

In Windows 7, open Start menu (press WINDOWS KEY on your keyboard) and type "backup". Click Backup and Restore.

Now it is time to connect your external hard disk. Make sure the drive is dedicated for backups - it must have enough free space for at least one full backup, otherwise you will not see it listed in the next step.
Backup and Restore window states that Windows Backup has not been set up. Click Set up backup on the right.

Select the drive where you want to save your backup. I definitely recommend an external hard drive over optical discs because CD-s and DVD-s get spoiled easily - just a stronger scratch is often enough. Plus there are myriad of problems with restoring backups from optical media: the restore cannot find last disc, etc. You really do not need a failed restore.

Another good reason for a hard drive is large amount of data, such as videos, music, photos, etc. You wouldn't want to switch around 100 DVD-s to save 500 gigabytes of data, would you?  And then repeat it every day or week... phew! Besides, hard drives are so much faster while backing up or restoring.

Those who want to back up to network drives (NAS, for example) must remember that System Image Restore does not support Wi-Fi(wireless) connections. Your PC must be on a wired network for this to work properly.
Click your external hard drive in the list and then click Next.

Next, the What do you want to back up screen appears. If you do not have multiple hard drives or partitions, you can safely leave Let Windows choose (recommended) selected and click Next.

If you know that your device has more than one hard drive, select Let me choose and click Next.

Only those who selected Let me choose will see this screen. Under Data Files, your own Libraries (in bold) are always selected. You can deselect some profiles (user names) you do not use or want to backup, but make sure you leave Back up data for newly created users check box selected.
All hard drives and partitions on them are listed in Computer section. Do not select the drive with Windows icon (usually with "(C:)" in the end) - this one will be included in system image! If you have some other drives/partitions and you want to include them in backups, click to select them.
Make sure that Include a system image of drives: <your Windows drive/partition name and letter>is checked.
Click Next.

In Review your backup settings screen, click Change schedule link. By default, Windows Backup runs weekly (every Sunday), but what we really need is a daily backup. Don't worry, only the first backup will take long time (up to several hours), but the next ones will be incremental backups and normally just around 20 minutes long (unless you've added several gigabytes of data to your drives). 

Leave Run backup on a schedule (recommended) selected. Most users should select Daily from How often box and set a time when your computer is most probably turned on in What time box. Those who know that their documents and other files are not modified or added that often can also use the default Weekly schedule.
Please remember to have your external hard disk or USB flash drive connected at that time each and every day.
Click OK to accept changes.

Back in Review your backup settings screen, click Save settings and run backup.

Your first backup will start. This one will take at least an hour, so you might want to do something else meanwhile. The following daily backups will copy only changed and added files, so they will normally take just around 20 minutes. Once a week or two, a full system image backup will be refreshed, and this will take about an hour or more again.

Each time a scheduled backup is in progress, you will see a black clock mark on the Action Center icon in Taskbar Notification area in Windows 7 and 8. Do not restart or shut down your computer until the clock mark disappears - wait until backup is complete!

Creating a System Repair Disc or Recovery Drive for troubleshooting and restoring Windows 7, 8 and 10

After your first backup is complete, Windows will offer to create a bootable system repair disc on a CD/DVD or USB (the latter is available in Windows 8 and 10 only). This recovery media includes repair and restore tools that might come in handy when Windows will not start or you want to restore a system image. You can read more about repairing Windows 7, 8 and 10 in the Troubleshooting Windows section.
I suggest clicking Yes here.

See Create a System Repair Disc in Windows 7 and Create a Recovery Drive in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 for detailed instructions on how to create the bootable recovery media.

Changing scheduled backup settings later

If you want to change what and where is being backed up, click Change settings in Backup and Restore window. This process is similar to setting up a new backup, so I won't repeat myself here.

Turning off scheduled backups temporarily

In case you need to disable automatic backups for a few days for some really strange reason, click the Turn off schedule link in the left part of Backup and Restore window.

Do not forget you've done that: no automatic backups means no or less restore options later!

To re-enable automatic backups, click Turn on schedule.

Managing disk space used by Windows Backup and Restore

Backup and Restore in Windows 7, 8 and 10 normally manages disk space on the dedicated hard disk or USB flash drive itself - if free space falls below requirements for a new backup, an older incremental backup will be deleted automatically. The latest successful System Image Backup will always be retained, though.

You might still see a "The disk where your backups are being saved doesn't have enough free space" error from time to time. Maybe you copied something large onto the backup drive, or the total disk space itself is not enough to store multiple backups. You might want to runDisk Cleanup and/or CCleaner to reduce the size of unneeded temporary files.
Click Manage backup disk space in the error dialog.

If the Backup and Restore window is already open, click Manage space instead.

In the Space usage summary section, you can see how much disk space currently available backups consume. I never recommend messing with System Images - you do want to restore a working Windows.
Click View backups in Data file backup section to manage data file backups.

Data file backups are grouped by backup periods - these might be on a day-to-day basis, or include several weeks. Select one or more oldest backup periods - you can hold down CTRL key on your keyboard to select multiple periods. Never remove all file backups at once.
Click Delete.

Windows Backup and Restore will confirm deletion. Click Delete.

After the selected data file backups are gone forever, click Close.

Verifying that automatic backups do work

Automatic backups are almost like set and forget - just do not expect Windows to turn on your computer by itself at scheduled time. But what if you forget to connect your external hard drive or backups fail for some reason?

First, Action Center will inform about incomplete and failed backups. Click the notification message (or open Action Center) to see the reason for failure.

Here's an example when backup completed, but some files were skipped. Click the View skipped files link to see the failed items. The errors are often related to OneDrive (or SkyDrive) subfolders, such as C:\Users\<your user name>\OneDrive\Music. These "The system cannot find the file specified (0x8007002)" error can safely be ignored. You might want to change backup settings to exclude the skipped folders and files so that backups would complete without errors.

Second, you can check records in Event Viewer. Event ID-s 4099, 4103 and 4106 in Application log indicate that there were problems with backup.

You can also see Backup Service logs in Event Viewer to find out how much time backups usually take and whether backups take place at all. Look for Event ID-s 8, 20 and 50 for cancelled and failed backup operations.

In Windows 7, the very best way is to set up automatic notifications for failure events 4099, 4103 or 4106. Windows 8 and newer do not support such notifications anymore.