Windows offers a few different ways to back up your files. The most common choice, especially for those who have an external hard drive, is to use File History. File History is the primary offline data backup tool for Windows 11. It allows you to automatically save data to a drive and restore it. It has some similarities with the Time Machine feature in Mac computers where you will be able to restore multiple previous versions of a document or file if it has accumulated changes over time. For example, on a Word document, that you've had several variations for, with File History you could restore to the first save, or even the third or fourth depending on how far back you need to go.
Setting it up is easy:
1. Click on the Start button, or on the Search on the Taskbar, and type in “Control Panel” then open it.
2. In the Search box for Control Panel, type in “File History”
3. Once in the search results, click on “File History”.
4. Plug in a drive if you have not already (for this example we are using a Flash drive, but you can use any type of external hard drive for this) you would like to back up your files to and then click on “Turn on”
5. To restore data, go to the Control Panel again and type in “file history”, then select “Restore your files with File History”
6. Press on that green button it will restore all files to the most recent backup.
7. You can also go into specific folders, and then select the specific file you would like to restore
8. With multiple backups, you can restore your folders to previous versions. You just need to right-click on a folder and click on Properties.
9. Then it will pull this page up, you will need to select “Previous Versions” and it will pull up a list of backups of that folder along with the date and time it was backed up. You will need to select the version you would like to go back to and then hit restore.
10. To change the frequency file history saves and deletes your files, you can go to the main page here and click on Advanced settings.
11. After hitting Advanced settings it will take you here, in this drop-down menu, you can change the frequency and select when it (or if) it will delete your backups
That's it!
