Time Machine Equivalent for Windows 11/10/8/7 (Full-Featured)

About Time Machine

As a disaster recovery and backup feature, Time Machine in Mac does a great job indeed. Currently, every Mac computer comes with Time Machine. It saves hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month until the volume runs out of space. 

One can easily go back to the time point hours ago or days ago, and find out how the files or documents look like at that point. That’s why it is called “Time Machine”. All of these can be done with an external hard drive or network attached storage (NAS).

Why Need Time Machine Windows Equivalent?

So excellent it is, Time Machine could be only applied in Apple macOS. For user who is running Windows OS, Time Machine software for Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11 is quite necessary.

💡 Does Windows have an equivalent to Time Machine?

Windows has two built-in backup tools, that is, Backup and Restore and File History. However, the functions of the built-in tools are limited. Many users are looking for the alternative to Windows Backup and Restore as well as File History.

As a result, relying on third-party backup utility becomes an unavoidable phenomenon. Then, which one on the market could be the best Windows Time Machine alternative? Let’s discuss it from the following aspects.

All-Around Windows Alternative to Time Machine – AOMEI Backupper🔥

To know if the software is similar to the piece you used before, just check if the highlighted features of the old software are embedded with this software. We think AOMEI Backupper Professional is the best Time Machine for Windows 11, 10, 8/8.1, 7, XP and Vista, because it contains almost all outstanding features in Time Machine. In the meantime, some helpful features that Time Machine does not have can be found here.

There are six backup types available in AOMEI Backupper Professional: System Backup, Disk Backup, Partition Backup, File Backup, Cloud Backup and Outlook Backup. Download it now and get to know useful functions of this software one by one.

Schedule Backup

As we know, Time Machine does Hourly backup, Daily backup as well as Weekly backup. All backups run automatically so that you can do “set-it-and-forget-it” backup. It is quite helpful for user who is busy with other stuff or just has a bad memory. 

Likewise, the Schedule in AOMEI Backupper also provides this type of backup. It provides daily, weekly, monthly, event-trigger, and USB plug-in backup types, and the “Interval” option in daily backup allows you to backup every 1/2/3/4/6 hours. One can easily switch between one-time backup and schedule backup through the path: Home > the backup task > Schedule.

If you click Advanced in the Schedule window, you'll see an option called “Run the missing backup after starting computer next time”. It will be of great help if the PC is shut down before the scheduled backup time point.

Incremental & Differential Backup

Time Machine creates incremental backups of files that can be restored at a later date. It allows users to restore the whole system or specific files from the Recovery HD or the macOS Install DVD. This also explains why Time Machine does not take much space on backup drive, nor spend much time for backup.

AOMEI Backupper allows users to create full, incremental and differential backup to fully protect the entire computer and minimize the storage space at the same time. If incremental backup or differential backup is selected, you also need to configure backup intervals so that after a certain number of incremental/differential backups, one full backup will be performed automatically to avoid data loss to the largest extent. 

Delete Old Backups Automatically

Time Machine saves hourly backups, daily backups and weekly backups of the computer. Obviously, many backups would be created. If there is not enough space for further backup, the oldest backups will be deleted when the disk becomes full. 

The feature Scheme in AOMEI Backupper has the same effect in deleting old backups. In fact, it can delete old backups even when there is enough space on the external backup disk.

Password Protection for Backups

You can choose to encrypt your backups using Time Machine. If you do that, you will need a password to access your backups. You can find the same feature in AOMEI Backupper as well. In Backup Options, you are allowed to set a password for the images before you start the backup.

Selective Files Restore

When you need to find a particular file that you have deleted, just navigate to the location the file used to be stored, start Time Machine, scroll the mouse up and down on the right side and find the backup point. This is effective because most backup tools on the market require restoring the entire backup image to get one or two particular files.

Fortunately, the Time Machine alternative, AOMEI Backupper Professional, provides selective files restore to restore individual files. You can preview the backup files first by exploring an image.

Besides these similar features to Time Machine, there are some functions offered by AOMEI Backupper that may be useful:

• VSS service for backup without interrupting (also known as hot backup).

• Create Bootable Media in case the system breaks down and cannot boot one day.

• Various storage devices are supported, including NAS, network share, USB flash drive, thumb drive, SSHD, external disk, etc.

• Different disk types and file systems are supported, such as MBR and GPT, FAT/FAT32 and NTFS.

How to Backup Windows OS with AOMEI Backupper

In this part, I'll show you the detailed steps to backup Windows OS with AOMEI Backupper.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Backupper. Click Backup, and you will see the backup types here. Select System Backup.

Step 2. The System Backup will select the source part by default, so you just need to select a destination path to store the whole data on the system drives.

Step 3. Customize your backup task with Options, Schedule Backup and Backup Scheme. Then click Start Backup to proceed.

Supplement: Best Enterprise Data Backup and Recovery Solution👍

If you are an enterprise user who has multiple Windows devices that need to be backed up, you can try the best enterprise backup software - AOMEI Cyber Backup. It offers you all-around enterprise data backup and recovery solution:

• It enables you to create system/disk/partition backup for a bunch of Windows PCs from one central console.
• You can schedule a backup task to run daily/weekly/monthly using the full/incremental/differential backup method.
• You are allowed to restore the backup image to the same computer or different computer.
• If your backup has multiple versions, you can choose to restore from any point you want.

Download this powerful enterprise backup software now to have a try!

To backup your entire PC, follow these steps:

1. Log in AOMEI Cyber Backup, and add the Windows device that you want to backup.

2. Click Backup Task on the left menu bar and select Backup Task > Create New Task.

3. Choose Disk Backup as the Backup Type and finish the rest settings.

Note: AOMEI Cyber Backup can not only help you backup physical machines but also virtual machines. It enables you to backup VMware and Hyper-V easily.

Verdict

Although there is not a Time Machine for Windows, we can find its equivalent to get the same result. AOMEI Backupper Professional, as an all-around backup utility, could be the best Time Machine Windows equivalent for Windows 7/8/10/11.

It is not easy to find a well-content equivalent, just enjoy! You'll be more pleased to find that AOMEI Backupper can help you with disk to disk clone, system clone, and partition clone.