How to Backup C Drive on Windows 11 | 2 Ways

Is there any need to backup C drive?

C drive is the core of your computer and is extremely important to keep your computer running properly. C drive contains so much important info, including the operating system and system files to support your computer running normally, as well as users’ personal data. If the C drive is damaged or lost unfortunately, it will lead to the computer boot abnormally and serious data loss, causing terrible outcomes for you.

Having a backup of the C drive is crucial, as it enables a quick and seamless recovery of the PC to its normal state in the event of accidents, minimizing downtime and safeguarding vital data from being lost. By preserving a backup of the C drive, users can efficiently revert to a stable system state, ensuring a smoother and more reliable computing experience.

What are the benefits of backing up C drive?

It’s beneficial to make a backup for C drive:

♧Make sure enough space on C drive: too much or overburdened loads of data stored will crash your C drive. All kinds of data such as cashes and browsing history from various applications are taking up space on your C drive. However, you can make room on the C drive after you back up your C drive Windows 11 by cleaning up unnecessary files safely.
♧Change or upgrade the system or help sync your files on multiple devices: once you have backed up your C drive, you can restore it on your new computer or you work smoothly on multiple devices simultaneously.
♧Prevent data loss: if your device is attacked by viruses or malware software or you want to sell or donate your computer, backup your C drive will help you keep data private.

Thus, it’s necessary and urgent to back C drive. And you can backup C drive to an external hard drive, other locations on your computer, or network locations as you like.

How to backup C drive on Windows 11

How to backup C drive efficiently? There are two ways to perform it.

Backup C drive with Backup and Restore

Backup and Restore is a built-in utility in Windows to back up your C drive. The working principle is just to create a copy of the C drive to another hard drive on the computer or an external hard drive or a network location. How to perform it? Follow up to read:

Step 1. Open the Control panel, find and select Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

Step 2.  In the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) window, click the Create a system image option to continue.

Step 3. Then select where you want to save your backup and click Next to continue. You can save your backup image to an external hard drive or you can backup on a network.

Step 4. The C drive, EFI system partition, Recovery partition will be chosen by default, click Next button.

Step 5. Click on the Start backup button when all the settings are done.

An easy and reliable way----AOMEI Backupper

It’s time-consuming and laborious to use the traditional way to backup the C drive. Is there any simple and reliable way? The answer is absolute! You can use third-party software to help you. AOMEI Backupper Standard is recommended by millions of people for its reliability and excellent performance. As a free backup and cloning software, it is compatible with many PC systems like Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 11(32-bit and 64-bit). Below are listed some of its distinguished features:

♦It supports not only disk backup, but also partition backup and system backup.
♦It supports various storage locations, you can save your backup to USB, HDD, SSD, etc.
♦Automatic backup: it allows you to set a customized schedule backup, you can backup your C drive in daily/weekly/monthly/event-trigger/USB plug-in mode.
♦Offer backup scheme: you can not only copy the entire disk with full backup, but also can only backup the changes by incremental and differential backup. What’s more, you can save your backup location space effectively by using its backup cleanup. (Differential backup and backup cleanup are available in the professional edition).

Now download AOMEI Backupper and launch it.

✍Caution: If you want to backup your C drive to an external hard drive, please make sure it has been connected properly and can be detected.

Step 1. Select Backup and then choose System Backup.

Step 2. You can see the partition included as part of the system backup are displayed automatically. Then you need to select a destination path to backup system to.

Step 3. Click Start Backup to create a C drive backup in Windows 11.

✍Tip: You can click the Schedule Backup option at the bottom to set automatically backup C drive Windows 11 to external hard drive or other locations as you wish.

Wrapping things up

Now you know how to backup C drive Windows 11 with efficient ways: the built-in utility Backup and Restore and a third-party software AOMEI Backupper. Also, the methods are also applicable to backup C drive Windows 10 and other systems. This software is not only an excellent backup software, but also serves as one of the most incredible external hard drive cloning software. Still, if you feel your storage location has overloaded, you can use it to free up disk space Windows 7.