support.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows/backup-and-recovery-tools-in-windows-e6d629c4-2568-4406-814f-209a2af06ef7
On the linked page, Microsoft lists all the methods to recover Windows that are included in Windows along with brief explanations. Like many [most?] others, I make a distinction between the stuff that would be difficult if not impossible to replace, and the files that make up Windows and the software that I've installed. The 1st category is stored in multiple locations. As for the 2nd, I prefer to perform a disk / partition image backup of everything whenever there's a change that would take longer to repeat [redo] then it takes to perform that backup. It takes minutes to update Chrome or Edge for example, so if I restored an older backup without the latest versions, updating each browser a 2nd time would be trivial. A Windows update on the other hand takes longer than creating a new image backup, so I'll perform a backup after performing a Windows update. I think that Microsoft believes most people running / using Windows will not backup their files for whatever reasons, so they go out of their way to encourage users to keep all of their data in OneDrive cloud storage, and then make it as easy as possible to reinstall Windows. That would of course mean reinstalling your software and again setting all of your preferences, which together with the time it takes to install Windows is generally much longer than the time it takes to restore an image backup. I'm Lazy -- to me it's all about efficiency [less time, less work].
Microsoft starts out with what they nowadays call Windows Backup, which is simply storing your desktop along with what's in Documents, Pictures, Videos, & Music in your OneDrive account. To go beyond that you either have to copy files to OneDrive manually, or set up a symbolic link to the folder you want to duplicate in OneDrive in the OneDrive folder under your User folder. For people using cable broadband, &/or anyone else with SEVERLY limited upload bandwidth, this is only practical with relatively few small files.
Next is File History, which really is pretty neat. It syncs the files in a location you set to an external drive / USB stick at the interval you set. System Protection means setting a Restore Point, which stores earlier versions of files. Restoring a Restore Point may or may not work. Restore points take up storage space in the System Volume Information folder -- I delete or clear them before performing an image backup to save space, which you can do by clicking configure in the System Protection window you get to in Settings -> System -> About. Caution -- very occasionally the apps you get from the Store can screw up when they're updated, leaving behind gigabytes of files that cannot normally be cleared from the System Volume Information folder -- the only way I'm aware of to delete those files is booting to Linux and manually deleting them. You can see what's currently stored in the System Volume Information folder using WizTree.
Windows Backup and Restore is a disk / partition image backup app similar to 3rd party tools like AOMEI Backupper that dates to Win7, when [IMHO] Microsoft was more optimistic about the level of responsibility shared among Windows users. Image backup software is not rocket science -- you simply clone the disk / partition to a VHD -- and this Windows tool works well. Its weakness is creating the bootable USB stick you'll need to restore a backup after a total failure.
And finally Microsoft dumps everything else under the heading of Recovery Tools. This category includes what they call Go Back. When you install another version of Windows the old files are stored in a folder named Windows.old. You can delete that folder if you run Disk Cleanup, or Windows will automatically delete it after 10 days. During that 10 day period you can have Windows go back to the earlier version using files stored in that Windows.old folder. Reset [reinstalls Windows] & Advanced Startup depend on a subset of Windows files that are *usually* stored on the Recovery partition that's set up when Windows is installed, but can sometimes be located in the C:\ Recovery\ folder. There are a Lot of things that can break that recovery setup -- at a Command Prompt, typing reagentc /info & pressing Enter gives an indication of whether it's working or not. Something similar to what's stored on the Recovery partition can be found in the Windows setup ISO when added to a bootable USB stick -- you get to it once setup is running. If Windows is running enough that you can get to Windows Update, you can now reinstall / reset Windows from there, downloading the needed files.
Not mentioned for some reason is the option to create a Recovery Drive, which is found in Control Panel -> Recovery. You can also find it under Control Panel -> Security and Maintenance, and it's listed in Control Panel -> Windows Tools. Like so much else in Windows it may or may not work, but it can't hurt to create one in case it's ever needed & found useful. It will take a while, and for this PC took up a bit more than 8GB on the USB stick.
That all said, Windows can sometimes be a POS PITA. A case in point, and another reason I'm a fan of 3rd party disk / partition image backup apps... put together a PC for my son. Once Windows was installed, updated, drivers were up to date etc., I restarted, booting to a Macrium Reflect USB stick & did a full disk image backup. Next day I fired it up, added some software, installed a new mouse, & went to create a new backup. This time -- who knows why -- I decided to boot to my Windows To Go drive to perform the backup, and after self-updating drivers it crashed. It Should Not Have Been A Big Deal, but the installed copy of Windows apparently thought it had crashed, tried to self repair, and broke Windows completely. And it was Windows that was broken -- I restored the backup for the boot partition to no effect, and had to restore the complete backup to get it working [the boot loader / BCD uses its own registry hive that probably got screwed up]. Of course that meant redoing everything I had done that day but oh well... the alternatives would be to try various tools, like the Recovery Drive I just talked about, each with at best 50/50 odds of success. Or I could mount the backup on my PC, try to import the registry from that backup into Regedit, export the BCD hive from that, unload Regedit & the backup image, then boot to a Command Prompt on my son's PC and try to delete that hive & merge the old one into Windows registry. And it might work, or not -- I'm guessing that it was the problem. Restoring the backup, and redoing the work was cut & dry.