How to Backup a Windows on ARM Laptop – all files, profiles, settings and personalization

In this article, we’ll learn how to backup a laptop with an ARM processor, such as Surface Pro X, Lenovo Yoga 5G, or Samsung Galaxybook S.

If you have a Windows on ARM laptop, you may have already noticed that most backup products are unable to run on Windows 10 ARM edition. Fortunately, there is a great backup product that fully supports Windows on ARM, and allows you to automatically backup your entire Windows 10 ARM laptop, including program files, user settings, profiles, emails, documents, pictures, music, favorites – everything you’ve got.

Don’t worry, though – there is no technical talk in this article, and you don’t need to worry about ARM aspects at any point.

How to backup a Windows 10 on ARM laptop – to external drive, to NAS or to Cloud

The product we will be using here is Zinstall FullBack Pro. It maintains an always up to date, complete backup of your entire ARM laptop, and keeps it safe at all times.

Here is how to set it up:

1. Download and run FullBack Pro to your ARM computer (you can get a free trial of the backup software here).
2. Click the “Turn On” button.
3. If you have a USB external drive connected, it will automatically backup your ARM computer to the USB drive. Otherwise, FullBack will offer you a choice of available backup destinations, such as network drives, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon S3 and so on.
4. That’s it! Everything is automatic from now on.

It really is that simple to keep your entire computer safe.

Video: How To Backup a Windows on ARM computer

Click here to get FullBack

Complete Backup, Complete Restore

So, what happens now?

Zinstall FullBack will first make a full backup of the entire computer.

After that, it will keep backing up the changes as you make them. So if you change a file, or install a new program, your backup will be updated with those changes. This is all done completely automatically. In fact, you probably won’t even feel it running. It is very efficient in handling just the changes made, and even protects the health of your hard drive, by minimizing the amount of reads and writes to it (this makes the drive live longer!)

If you get disconnected from your backup destination, that’s OK – Zinstall will patiently wait until you connect it again and continue backing everything up, automatically.

Of course, the real reason you have a backup is the restore part. How do you restore a single file that you’ve misplaced? And how do you restore everything if your computer crashes? Read on to find out.

How to restore a file that I’ve accidentally deleted?

So you were working on an important document, and now it’s gone. Fear not – that’s exactly why you have set up an automatic backup of your entire Windows 10! Here is what you do:

1. Open your Zinstall FullBack’s Restore wizard.
2. If you remember the file’s name, just type it into the search box. It will appear below.
3. If you don’t remember what the file was called, but do remember where it was, you can browse your backup files, and find your file like that.
4. Once you have the file, just hit restore – and it will appear exactly where it was, up to date!

That’s it – your file is back and unharmed.

Are there other ways to backup everything on my computer?

Yes, Zinstall FullBack is not the only option out there, although for an ARM-based laptop, there aren’t too many viable options just yet. Here are some other ways you can handle your backup:

• Disk Image / Clone tools (Windows System Backup / Acronis): these are the pro-oriented options, which take a full clone image of the computer. Like Zinstall FullBack, they capture your entire computer. The downside is that that you have to manually do the backup (so it will be outdated soon), it is very difficult to restore a single file, and if the computer crashes, you’ll need to restore to the exact same hardware model (and you can’t restore to a different Windows) – and most of these tools unfortunately do not support ARM systems.
• Copying files to Dropbox / OneDrive: in itself, a cloud sync tool like Dropbox or OneDrive is not really a backup (it’s manual, does not even come close to covering everything you have, does not cover programs or settings), but it is better than having no backup at all! So if your choice is doing nothing at all vs. copying some of your files to Dropbox, use Dropbox. Then again, you can use Zinstall FullBack to turn Dropbox or OneDrive into backup tools – see here for our guides on How to Backup Computer to Dropbox and How to Backup Computer to OneDrive

Summary

Having an ARM-based Windows laptop (such as Surface Pro X, Lenovo Yoga 5G, or Samsung Galaxybook S) does not mean that you have to compromise on backup. ARM computers experience computer crashes and data loss just as much as other PCs. This tutorial takes about 5 minutes to follow – why not invest those minutes in making you safe from computer crashes?

With a 30-day no-questions-asked cancellation policy, there really is no risk – only the benefit of having all of your stuff safely protected.

Ready to backup your entire Windows 10 ARM computer?

Click here to get a free trial of FullBack