Windows 10: Backing up the OneDrive folder to an external drive

Hello,I am using Windows 11 with two drives: one for the OS and software, the other for personal files. I also use OneDrive to store my files online. The OneDrive folder is on my second non-OS drive, and I have set it so all the files are also available locally.I want to regularly backup this folder to an external drive. I have searched online to try and find out how to do this, but none of the answers solve my problem. The file history method will only backup folders on my OS drive, so I can't use it for the other drive.Any help would be great!

:)

 

Automatically backing up folders on D: drive to OneDrive

Hi Dale. I'm Greg, 10 years awarded Windows MVP, here to help you.

Symlinks won't work with OneDrive so what I'd do instead of moving D into OneDrive is to move OneDrive to D which is easy to do during it's setup.

You can unlink OneDrive and then sign back in, during setup move the OneDrive folder to D drive. Then anything you put into OneDrive on D drive goes to the cloud, put it elsewhere in D and it doesn't.

You could also move your User folders into OneDrive on the D drive as shown here: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-move-default.... . This is the same as enabling OneDrive backup but it works for all User folders and not just Desktop, Documents and Pictures.



Report back results for each step so I know what else to suggest.

Feel free to ask back any questions. Based on the results you post back I may have other suggestions if necessary.

______________________________________________

Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

 

File History not backing up OneDrive Documents folder (but correctly backing up other OneDrive folders)

I have my Documents folder and all my photos located in my OneDrive, so that they are always backed up to the cloud. I have previously successfully also used File History to back up all my user files and
libraries (including the OneDrive folder) to a local external drive and it has worked fine for many years. However, recently I noticed that there is something strange happening with the Documents subfolder in the OneDrive folder of the File History backup
when I went to restore a previous version of a file in OneDrive\Documents and the 'Restore personal files' view showed
only a small number of files and folders, not the whole of the current contents of the OneDrive\Documents folder. Moreover, instead of the most recent automatic backup date showing (effectively) the current state of the OneDrive\Documents folder,
it only showed files that had been modified since the previous automatic backup date. If I manually went backwards in time through the backups, I could see other files in my OneDrive\Documents folder that had been modified previously and were still currently
in that folder, but for some reason were not showing in the 'Restore personal files' view of the most recent backup.

I thought something must have gotten out of sync with the File History database, so I stopped the file history service, deleted the
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory folder, deleted the File History backup folder from the external drive and then rebooted the PC. As expected after rebooting and going into Control Panel -> File History it showed that
File History was off and there was no File History drive set. I then created a new File History backup to the external drive and checked that there were no 'excluded folders' set. Absolutely everything else got backed up correctly in the new backup, except
for just the OneDrive\Documents folder, which wasn't created at all in the new backup. For example, my OneDrive\Pictures folder backup correctly had all 22.3GB of data comprising 13,067 files and 255 folders, exactly as expected.

I then modified a test file in my OneDrive\Documents folder, clicked on 'Run Now' in File History and then checked the backup. There was now a Documents folder showing in the OneDrive folder, but it contained
just that one test file I had modified.

I tried the suggestion I had seen in a previous discussion thread about this problem of manually adding the full OneDrive\Documents path to the list of backed up folders. It was already there in the list,
but I tried adding it anyway. It made no difference and the folder is still not being backed up.

Why isn't File History backing up all of the folders in OneDrive and selectively refusing to back up just the Documents folder?

 

Backing Up OneDrive Folder with File History

I am backing two computers - a desktop and a laptop, both running Windows 10 - to an external hard drive via File History. On each computer, the majority of our files are in a OneDrive folder, so I have included OneDrive on the list of folders to back
up. On the desktop, all subfolders in the OneDrive folder back up just fine (Erika's Pictures, Erika's Music, Erika's Documents). On the laptop, Peter's Music and Peter's Documents back up, but Peter's Pictures does not. To get it to back up, I have to manually,
separately, add it to the list of folders that File History includes. Obviously, this is easy enough to do, but I don't understand why it is happening or how to fix it. Any ideas? Thank you.