How do I back up my Onedrive?
QAfter many years, the size of my Onedrive account now exceeds the capacity of my current laptop drive. I’m conscious that I shouldn’t rely on Onedrive as my sole backup storage, so I’m considering buying a larger external hard drive just to back up the entire contents of my Onedrive account. I’ve tried to find software for this but have failed. Any ideas? Graeme Neale
AThere are various ways to do this. One quick method is to download everything directly from Onedrive itself. First, log in at www.onedrive.com. Next, on the left, click ‘My files’, then on the right, under ‘My files’ and to the left of the Name heading, click the small circle to select the entire contents. Now, just click the Download button (see screenshot 1 ) to get a ZIP file that contains the entire contents and folder structure of your Onedrive.
Alternatively, you could move your
Onedrive files to your larger external drive so you can maintain a local copy of everything. You could then include that external drive in your usual backup routine (using Windows Backup and Restore, for example).
To do this, first right-click the Onedrive taskbar icon and choose Settings. Next, select the Account tab and, click ‘Unlink this PC’ – and then again to confirm. You’ll be prompted to sign back in, but don’t just yet.
Now use File Explorer to move your Onedrive folder to your external drive. Return to the sign-in page, and sign in.
On the ‘Your Onedrive folder’ page, click ‘Change location’ 2 , then choose the Onedrive folder moved to the external drive. Click OK. Onedrive will warn that the folder already exists. Confirm it’s the one you want to use by clicking ‘Use this folder’, then just follow the rest of the prompts to complete the process.