Windows 11 is displaying a pop-up to promote the Backup app
Microsoft is displaying another nagging pop-up in Windows 11. This time, it promotes the Windows Backup app.
The app debuted last year for Windows 10 and 11, to help users back up their data. It does not include a complete backup of your system, instead Windows Backup makes a copy of your important files and folders (Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Videos), your settings, and credentials. The problem with it is that it relies on OneDrive’s cloud storage, and as you may know, free Microsoft accounts are limited to 5 GB of storage. Users can run out of space rather quickly if they store a lot of files in the aforementioned directories. Microsoft recently made a change to the initial setup of Windows 11, which enables OneDrive folder back up by default, this also poses a similar problem, i.e. you could run out of storage space, unless you upgrade to a premium plan which starts at $1.99 per month.
Windows 11 is displaying another annoying pop-up asking users to use Windows Backup
Now, Microsoft has begun displaying a pop-up to promote Windows Backup. The nag-screen, which was spotted by Windows Latest, is a server-side change. The message warns the user that "Your PC is not fully backed up", and the wording below it says "Backup is not turned on for Credentials and Folders. Back up now to save them if something happens to your PC". The pop-up has a button to "Back up now", and another to "Dismiss" the warning.
Considering that Windows Backup saves a limited amount of user data, i.e., your local folders are not backed up, the warning about backing up your PC is actually incorrect. This makes the pop-ups even more annoying. Windows Latest says that dismissing the notification will disable the pop-up for a few weeks, but the pop-up could reappear if you disable some Settings.
TechRadar suggested that Microsoft should consider making a Promo Center in Windows 11, to highlight the features and options that a user may have not enabled, such as the Windows Backup app. That's a good idea, limiting all the ads to a specific app that you can access if you want to would be a great improvement, instead of these pop-ups that are shoved in your face. That said, it is highly unlikely that it will happen. If anything, we can expect even more ads, because that is sadly what Microsoft cares about these days.
There have been several other ads in Windows over the past year. Windows 10 users ran into full-screen pop-up messages which prompted them to upgrade them to Windows 11. And then there were the Bing pop-up ads that appeared in Google Chrome. I have lost count of the number of times Microsoft has promoted Edge, Bing, OneDrive, in other areas of Windows 11. You may run into ads in the Start Menu, Settings app, and File Explorer. Did you know that the Microsoft Weather app shows ads too? Microsoft needs to stop this nonsense and focus on improving Windows 11. You don't see Apple pushing its products aggressively on macOS, do you? That's how you treat your users, it's their computer, not your billboard to display ads.
If you want to back up your PC, you can use free apps like Veeam Agent, Rescuezilla, or Macrium Reflect Free, and save the data to your external hard drive.
don’t use it when you use the backup it is for windows 7 and you can’t get the backup to recovery anything at all
windows 11 and companys using ai has not sayed anything about what is going on like locked out of your account on ebay and amazion and walmart you have to call or have them call you and then it is the same getting letters in the mail ai made that you own a bill from a company that you now and use you call that coanys and they have you bring the bill and it is not from them it is from ai and now the companys that made ai is tell how bad it is but won’t do anything about it and there is no help out there at all the makings of ai need to be in jail for theft ai is not helpping like they say’s it is stealing again and needs to be shut down for the good of the people
Such a terrible AI-made cover image for this article. Plenty of free stoch photo websites to use instead! I am seeing more often on Ghacks lately.
is there such a thing as free stock photos??
They nag users because no one is going to use it. They want to push users into a subscription trap.
Nobody wants to rely on your subpar backup solution Microsoft. We do not want our data stored in the cloud. Where is the local backup software found in Windows 7?
This is the only operating system that no longer has a decent backup solution. Microsoft is no longer capable of creating good software. Everything is nagware or crapware. I’ll continue to use Aomei.
Strange, other people have zero issues with volume shadow copies. And people able to use their UEFI BIOS just boot a Clonezilla or Rescuezilla (if you unironically need a GUI, heh) image from a flash USB compliant mass storage device.
Cannot change a tire? Pay a mechanic. Why shouldn’t the same apply to IT hardware and software? Those who know can do it, those who don’t? Well, I gently shove them towards the solution.
Wasn’t it Kant who said:
“It is so convenient to be immature.”
and
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.”
I’m not calling you immature for the record, in the German literal sense it is rather: Taking “responsibility” for oneself.
You can start today:
[https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php] Professionals
[https://rescuezilla.com/] Average Joe
Everyone here has the capabilities to stop complaining and take action. We don’t need MS. Did you know that MS officially recommends to use dedicated backup solutions?
I am dearly awaiting for ReactOS to get their Windows clone in full working condition, it’s still in Alpha phase since many years, although they have made great strides and gotten several apps to work it’s still buggy.
https://reactos.org/
Maybe in twenty more years. ReactOS is a hobby project.
Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Videos are not required to boot the os. Those are personal data and are not something you should be including in a backup let alone letting M.$ get their greedy fingers on.
They are however important and you should be storing copies of them in another physical location and the first location should not be your system drive. A second copy on a third physical or external drive on your PC will work. We have have 2 main pc’s and we keep copies of all that on both.
We do run monthly full and daily differential backups of the system drive as well.
We use Macrium Reflect Free for that which you can still get directly from Macrium instead of a third party Ahswin. It’s UI is not the most intuitive but it’s got everything you need to run automated backups while your sleeping.
If you do install it, read the fine print carefully, you must choose the right selections to keep using the free version.
https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/ReflectDLHF.exe
Note: There is no “Windows Backup” on windows 11. The last version of windows that had it was 10 and it has the Windows 7 backup program.
How is it that a technology site like Ghacks has NOTHING about the Friday “Microsoft” outage? Nothing !!! I wanted to read a nuanced analysis of it. Big miss.
been covered to death already, and not Microsoft’s problem. It’s just that people’s lack of knowledge will lead them to think it’s Microsoft, and their reputation will take a global hit anyway.
I have not seen this yet on W11 or W10.
I use Aomei Backupper to make a full drive backup. I keep the last 3 backups.
I have actually had to restore from backup more than once.
Windows “backup” now only promotes OneDrive. It’s another dark pattern by Microsoft intended to drive revenue. It must be hard to only be worth three trillion US dollars.
Microsoft has a platform to promote its services, apps. and third party products on Windows.
It’s the Microsoft App Store . I really don’t mind companies promoting their products but Microsoft does it in such a way as to annoy and frustrate users which I don’t think actually benefits Microsoft. More nagging is not better Microsoft.
Windows Backup could be fine if no Crowstrike issues were near your computer at any time.
Thanks for the article! :]
Not on my Laptop…switched to Linux long time ago.
The article is under “Windows 11 News” category, shouldn’t you ignore this category? As in, it’s not for you? Waste of space.
Hey man just saying that there are better options out there. No one should have to deal with Windows ads.
You’re wasting time here beating Linux to death.
“Microsoft recently made a change to the initial setup of Windows 11, which enables OneDrive folder back up by default”
As I said earlier in a topic about OneDrive, this will not happen in the EU.
For file and folder backups I use Karen’s Replicator. A program so simple yet so effective. Dating from the Windows XP times, and revitalized some years ago for Windows 10 and 11.
I distinguish image backup programs from file backup programs.
Macrium Reflect is good for boot drive images, even the last free version. Can mount the images and restore files, or restore the whole image.
For incremental data backups I use ASCOMP Backup Maker. It comes in free or cheap versions. Has all the features I need including backup from across the local network.