ARM-based Copilot+ PCs offer precious few backup options

On June 18, 2024, the first round of Copilot+ PCs arrived, including offerings from Microsoft, HP, Asus Acer, Dell, and Lenovo. I was lucky enough to land a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x on June 21^st and have been digging into its capabilities and limitations ever since.

Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a situation that is both unsurprising and disturbing — namely, that there are very, very few image backup and restore tools that work with the ARM64-based version of Windows 11 24H2 that ships on all currently available Copilot+ PCs.

Searching for working image backup packages

Indeed, a concerted series of Google and Bing searches have turned up exactly three software programs that can back up and restore ARM64 versions of Windows (all of which run only on Snapdragon X CPUs at present, though AMD64 versions on Intel and AMD CPUs are expected in the next month or two).

Two of those three options are at least mildly questionable, as I’ll explain:

1. Zinstall FullBack is a full-featured backup and restore package that performs constant incremental backups to a local or networked drive, or into the cloud. Zinstall has been active in the ARM side of Windows backup since Microsoft released early versions of Windows on ARM (WoA) for the Surface Pro X in November 2019. The vendor offers a free 30-day trial, and then charges US$14.90 per month thereafter to use the software.

A bare-metal restore to a non-booting PC will first require a clean Windows install on that machine (I’d recommend an ARM64 ISO from UUP dump), and then installing the Zinstall application. After that, you can restore a backup from your collection of prior snapshots and overwrite the temporary install with that install to pick up where it left off.

2. Microsoft’s Backup and Restore (Windows 7) Control Panel item is still available in Windows 11 24H2. As you can see in this Microsoft Learn article, Windows 7 Backup and Restore has been deprecated since the release of Windows 8 in 2012. This tool is intended to restore existing Windows 7 backups to newer Windows PCs, but it can back up and restore newer versions as well. It’s not a production-grade tool.

3. Version 6.0 of the Veeam Agent (which works with the company’s various backup and replication enterprise-grade solutions) has been force-fit to back up on ARM-based CPUs as of March 2023 (see the end of this R&D Forums note). It can be restored using a Veeam Agent running on an X64 PC. Here again, this appears to be something of a kludge.

Just for grins, I checked all of the backup packages mentioned in Tim Fisher’s November 2023 Lifewire article 32 Best Free Backup Software Tools. None of them supports ARM64 CPUs, either.

The Windows Backup option

When I asked Microsoft to comment on the situation, a spokesperson pointed me to the Microsoft support page for the Windows Backup app built into Windows 11, indicating that this tool provides a backup and recovery solution for ARM-based PCs. It does, but not completely.

As I discuss in a recent article on the new backup, recovery, and repair tools in Windows 11, the Windows Backup app is undoubtedly a useful tool for backing up files and folders, apps, settings, and credentials and restoring same. But its restore operation is not as seamless as when using dedicated image backup software, and it doesn’t easily scale up for enterprise use. Indeed, it requires one-at-a-time reinstall of all Windows apps and applications (through links in the Start menu) to fully restore a Windows 11 PC to match its backed-up installation state.

In other words, making complete image backups that can be quickly and easily restored requires third-party image backup software.

Get real about backup and restore in Copilot+ PCs

Realistically, Zinstall FullBack appears to be the only viable option for backing up and restoring Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus CPU models. (Elite models include X1E-00-1DE, X1E-84-100, X1E-80-100, and the X1E-78-100 found in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X; Plus models include X1P-64-100.)

Buyers considering an investment in the current crop of Copilot+ PCs should ponder this potential limitation (among others) carefully. They should also consider that the upcoming collection of Intel- and AMD-based Copilot+ PCs will work with all currently available Windows 11-compatible image backup and restore tools and platforms.

Related reading:

• Microsoft Copilot+ PCs: Finally, a reason to buy a new computer
• 5 Copilot+ PC AI features you can use at launch
• Will your business apps run on the latest Copilot+ PCs?