How do you back up and restore things without root? I've found that even with root, these days many backups are useless thanks to using hardware-backed encryption...
There are various options, but if you use syncthing, it is as easy as creating a share on your PC or backup machine and on the phone. Everything gets synced automatically.
Well everything you chose to sync gets synced. Like photos, documents etc. You can also set up apps in such a way where they make automatic local backups on your phone in the folder that gets synced. There are multiple android apps for syncthing