How to keep a backup of all your programs on windows 10?

Third-party imaging software offers a robust and user-friendly alternative to Windows' built-in tools, providing superior flexibility, faster backup speeds, and advanced features like incremental backups, compression, and scheduling. These applications create complete sector-by-sector snapshots of your entire system drive, encapsulating the operating system, all installed programs, system settings, and personal files into a single, restorable image file. 

Visit the Macrium website, download the free version of Reflect, and run the installer with administrator privileges.

Attach an external hard drive or NAS with enough free space (at least 1.5 times your used system drive space).

Launch Macrium Reflect and select your system drive (typically C:) from the list of disks. Click "Image this disk..." below it.

In the dialog box, under "Destination," click "Browse..." and navigate to your external drive. Name the file meaningfully.

Review the summary, ensuring your external drive is the target. Click "Finish," then "OK" to start the backup. The process may take 30 minutes to several hours, depending on data size. This will keep a backup of all your programs on windows 10.

Unlike simple file backups, a system image allows you to fully restore your computer to an exact working state after a crash, saving countless hours of manual program reinstallation and configuration.