Yes, there are some challenges in backup and recovery, for ordinary data, for installed programs, for files for an operating system, etc.

I'm struggling, don't have good solutions, have a good start, but otherwise have only a work in progress.

On my HP laptop Windows 10 computer, I have the D:\ recovery partition.

Otherwise I have 3 Western Digital USB external 3.5" form factor hard disk drives. Two of the drives have 2 TB (trillion bytes) of space, and the third one, new, has 5 TB.

I back up using ROBOCOPY with some carefully selected options. Occasionally I do a full backup of my data on C:\ and frequently I do an incremental backup of that data.

By my data I mean the Windows file system directory tree rooted at directory (for Apple users, folder)

     C:\Users\user1\

This procedure does a lot of good but has some flaws: One of these is that some of the directories close to C:\ are special in Windows and don't work in the normal ways with the command line command DIR, etc. I don't understand all the problems but for one it appears that there are circular references in the directory structure that lead some software operations, e.g., part of backup, to infinite loops -- as far as I can tell currently, really big, gigantic bummer.

So, there are problems: Last week an external keyboard held down a key on my laptop, and Windows got confused and deleted several icons from my screen, desktop. Bummer.

Eventually Windows users discover (apparently secret knowledge) that each such icon is from a file of type LNK. So, some of these files are in directory

     C:\Users\user1\Desktop\

but others are in directory

     C:\Users\Public\Desktop\

This directory was hidden until I used

     attrib -H

to unhide it. Well, the LNK file for the icon for my installation of an old version of Google's Web browser Chrome was in that directory and was one of the icons and LNK files confused Windows deleted.

And the actual EXE file for Chrome was in a directory that does not play well with DIR, etc.

So, it looked like (will do better next time) I had to go to a directory

     C:\Users\user1\prog05\google\chrome\

with program

     chromesetup.exe

and run that. And that is what I did. So, I reinstalled Chrome. I don't know if what was reinstalled was the old version of Chrome I had or a newer version. I care: When I like an old version of a program, I'm very reluctant to install a new version that replaces the old version. E.g., for Mozilla Firefox, I used to like it, but the recent version I have changed the user interface (in ways I regard as silly and steps backward) and, really bad, force me to close a popup window a few dozen times a day asking me to install an new version. [I do NOT want a new version -- Mozilla, I deeply, profoundly, bitterly, hate and despise the whole idea of frequent new versions. Please, please, please STOP pestering me to get new versions.] Further, when I have Firefox save a Web page and then display the saved copy, Firefox pings me asking that I make Firefox my default Web browser which it already is. And, once again, Firefox pesters me, interrupts my work, gives me another popup that demands that I reject installing a new version of Firefox. Further, some of the Web pages saved by Firefox, Firefox won't display but Chrome and Brave will. Silly situation.

Due to such pestering, I may have to junk Firefox: I have 100,000 lines of .NET code with comments with tree names of documentation, 6000+ Web pages, and used to use Firefox and a single keystroke to display such a Web page. Maybe now the pages won't display or I will get my work interrupted by two !@#$%^&*() popup windows I HATE. Looks like I may have to junk Firefox and go for Chrome, Brave, or some such. Maybe there is a way to download and keep a version of Firefox 5-10 years old that I liked JUST FINE the way it was -- no popup hassles.

So, net, Windows getting confused due to a key held down forced me to download a new version of Chrome -- really bad bummer. And the Chrome EXE file is in a directory that does not play well with DIR, some approaches to backup, etc.

For the LNK files in directory

     C:\Users\Public\Desktop\

I've copied those to part of the file system that behaves normally and where I can back it up.

It looks like I will have to do some system management mud wrestling to get the EXE files, etc. for programs in misbehaving directories

     C:\Program Files

     C:\Program Files (x86)

     C:\Windows

to a normal behaving part of the file system where I can use ROBOCOPY to back up the files and just COPY or XCOPY to restore selected files/directories from the backup.

To me these misbehaving directories look like a grand design disaster of Windows. Windows has had 30 or so years to get such things right and still has some serious, first grade, problems. I will have to investigate to find ways to work around these Windows disasters.

Near the top of my TODO list is getting around bad or missing Windows documentation to get around some really bad Windows system management disasters.

E.g., those circular references in the file system directory tree -- no longer a tree. WHAT a bummer. Where is the documentation for how the heck to work with such directories, list them, copy them, restore them? Was it really necessary to ruin the file system in this way?

E.g., I can't do a routine backup and restore and, thus, am pushed into depending on Web sites continuing to provide the downloads I want -- years from now. Bummer.

And part of this work to be done is to understand what I can do with the HP D:\ recovery partition and how to do it.

Uh, in simple terms, I want to know how to boot from a DVD, restore all the HP and Windows stuff from somewhere, DVDs if the size is small enough, from external hard drives otherwise, and then use ROBOCOPY to restore everything else. This goal seems simple and obvious enough. Now a big detour in my work is to figure out how to do that -- knowing that good documentation will be more rare than hen's teeth. System management mud wrestling to get around problems of HP and Windows instead of my real work.

On my other computer, a desktop computer I assembled from parts, e.g., an AMD FX-8350 processor, I have lots of internal hard disk space and two new 4 TB disk drives ready to install. So so far I do a lot in internal backup.

One problem is it appears that Windows has seen some free space on one of my hard disks and decided to use it for a lot of temporary storage to be used by running, installed programs. Since that storage changes frequently, it gets backed up as part of an incremental backup and makes my incremental backups much larger than they should be. Bummer. That is just what I do NOT want. And Windows never asked me about using my disk volumes this way, and so far I can't find any documentation for how to tell Windows to put that temporary junk where I would want it to be and out of the way of my real work. Windows, messing up my real work. Bummer.