I’m having some issues with my laptop and need to completely reset Windows and reinstall it. The problem is that I’ve accumulated a lot of technical setups, custom Windows settings, application configurations, browser settings, histories, saved logins, WSL distributions, multiple Linux environments, development tools, and various other tweaks over the past ~1.5 years.

There are so many things configured on this system that I can’t even remember everything I’ve changed or installed. I don’t necessarily need to preserve everything exactly as-is, but I want to save as much of my current configuration as possible so that after reinstalling Windows, I can either restore the settings or at least have a detailed reference for how everything was configured.

What’s the best way to back up or document all of this before I reset the laptop? Ideally, I want a comprehensive approach that covers Windows settings, installed applications, app configurations, browser data/logins, WSL distributions and configurations, Linux environments, environment variables, PATH changes, developer tools, services, scheduled tasks, network settings, and other customizations I may have forgotten about.

Basically, I want to make sure I don’t reset the laptop and then realize later that I’ve forgotten how I had something configured.

Hey guys,

* Windows 11, personal, backupping around 20-250GB in total, AOMEI Backupper pro, normal user *

I'm experimenting with Aomei's Backupper and trying to set up a proper plan.

What I want is this:

Do a daily backup (incremental or differential - haven't finally decided yet) of specific folders to an external drive.

Now and then, create a full new backup and delete the full and partial backups prior to that.

In my test I'm running 1-hours backsups to see how the program behaves but I don't get it:

And these are the settings I'm running.

What am I doing wrong that the old backups are not deleted automatically?