Depends what data you're backing up. I'm not an expert so there might be a better way to do it, but I connected it to the laptop with the normal lead and it comes up in the file explorer section of windows, where all the drawers are. You then click on the phone name and the files that I backed up were all the photos, they're stored in the DCIM file. My partner had set her Whatsapp account to back up, so that all came back down when I logged into the phone again using her gmail address.
I also downloaded an app to her phone prior to doing a factory reset which is called SMS backup and restore. You can then save all of your call logs and text messages. You need to save this to your computer as when you wipe the phone this goes, give the file a name you're going to remember, then when you start the phone again, after all the accounts have synced, you have to reload the app as it has been deleted in the wipe, then download the file from your computer and it uploads all your texts again.
When the phone was wiped I then turned it back on, signed on with her gmail and password and it gave me the option to rebuild from a saved point, provided you've been backing up to google the phone rebuilds itself, but the worst case scenario is that you have to download the apps you had before yourself, which is no biggy. I took pictures of her screens on my phone so that I could put the icons back where they were before, but you could screenshot them as you can also save the screenshots from windows explorer. Most of the apps seemed to do their thing (whatsapp, email etc) when I entered her passwords. My advice would be to not open facebook or messenger as they don't work still, and opening them may cause the phone to freeze, so if they are downloaded then delete them for the time being and access facebook through chrome, you can save it as a bookmark and place it on your home screen, hopefully this will only be a temprary measure. Hope this helps.
Cheers
Moz
