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Quick reference
Backup Files to OneDrive
Learn how to backup your most important files and folders to the cloud.
When to use
It's important to always keep a backup of our files so that if something happens to our PC, we can recover the data.
Instructions
One of the most crucial parts of working with Windows 11 is that we back up our important files and folders. If we don't have any kind of backup, and simply store our files on the hard drive, if the PC breaks, or if we lose our laptop, those files are gone.
Historically, people have backed up their PCs to external hard drives or the backup has been done for them by their IT Team. These days, the quickest and easiest way to backup our files is to store them in OneDrive cloud storage.
Back Up to OneDrive
OneDrive automatically backs up any files and sub-folders stored in the following folders: Desktop, Documents, Pictures. This is why it is so important to work within the existing file structure in File Explorer. If we create folders outside of these three folders they won't be backed up.
If we have a OneDrive account on our PC, our files are automatically backing up continuously. Each time we make a change to a file, it will be automatically uploaded to the cloud, effectively creating a backup.
If something happens to our PC, our data is safe in the cloud. We can still access our files through OneDrive online and restore them if required.
Manage OneDrive Backups
- Click the cloud icon in the corner of the taskbar.
This will pop open a window. Here, we can see any files that are currently synchronizing with the cloud.
- Click the cog icon.
- Click Settings.
- Click the Backup tab.
Here, we can see the folders that OneDrive will backup. If we don't want to backup one or more of these folders we can de-select them.
OneDrive backs up constantly in the background. However, if we want to force a backup to run we can click the Start Backup button.
Login to download- 00:04 It's important to always make sure that we are backing up our files.
- 00:08 If we don't take a back up and something happens to our PC,
- 00:12 we could lose a lot of important data.
- 00:15 And these days, there are a few different ways that you can back up your most
- 00:18 important files and folders on your PC.
- 00:20 Now, when I first started my career in IT about 20 plus years ago,
- 00:24 we didn't have access to things like cloud storage.
- 00:28 So any back up that we did would have to be to some kind of external drive,
- 00:34 or maybe a USB stick, or even a CD, for
- 00:37 those of you old enough to remember those things.
- 00:40 But these days in 2022, we have cloud storage.
- 00:45 And if we're dealing with Microsoft products, we have OneDrive cloud storage.
- 00:49 And as we've already seen in this course,
- 00:52 when you set up Windows 11, OneDrive is completely integrated.
- 00:56 So as long as you have an account, it might even be a free account,
- 01:00 you have OneDrive storage.
- 01:02 And backing up our important files and
- 01:04 folders to the cloud is a really great way of backing up.
- 01:07 It's the only way that I back up my files these days, because I know that
- 01:11 my files and folders are stored safely away on the Microsoft server, so
- 01:16 it doesn't matter what happens to my PC.
- 01:18 I can always recover that information if I need to.
- 01:22 So let's take a look at how we set about OneDrive to manage our backups.
- 01:26 Now as we've mentioned a few times in this course,
- 01:30 if we open File Explorer Windows key E and
- 01:34 click on our C drive, we all have our own home folder.
- 01:38 And for me, as I'm logged in as cellmates, it's going to be this one just here.
- 01:42 And the things that I have in here are really the main folders that I want to
- 01:46 back up, so things like my Desktop, Documents, Pictures.
- 01:50 And this is why I always say to people always try and
- 01:53 work within the current file structure, because it's these folders
- 01:57 that are going to be automatically backed up to OneDrive.
- 02:00 So you want to make sure you have all of your subfolders contained within these.
- 02:04 So let's take a look at our back up settings.
- 02:08 Now, if you have OneDrive active on your PC, you'll see in the bottom right
- 02:12 hand corner a little cloud icon, and it's this one just here.
- 02:16 And you can see that currently, my OneDrive is processing some changes.
- 02:20 Now if we click on this icon, it's going to open up as settings for OneDrive.
- 02:26 You can currently see that mine is uploading some video files
- 02:29 that I created a few minutes ago.
- 02:31 So I'm just going to let that process away because we really want to go into
- 02:35 the settings.
- 02:36 So if we click the cog icon and jump into Settings,
- 02:40 this is where we're going to find a few different tabs.
- 02:43 Now, the one that we want is the back up tab.
- 02:46 And it says important PC folders, back up your files in the Desktop, Documents and
- 02:52 Pictures folder to OneDrive so they're protected and available on other devices.
- 02:58 So it's worth noting that this back up just backs up any files and
- 03:02 folders that you have within Desktop, Documents and Pictures.
- 03:06 Once again, that's why we should work with the current structure.
- 03:10 Now, if we go into Manage back up, so
- 03:13 this shows us the folders that OneDrive is going to back up.
- 03:17 So you can see here it says the selected folders will sync in OneDrive.
- 03:21 New and existing files will be added to the OneDrive backed up and
- 03:25 available on your other devices.
- 03:27 So as I save more documents to these three folders,
- 03:30 it's going to automatically back them up to the cloud.
- 03:34 We don't really need to do anything.
- 03:36 Now if for some reason there's one of these folders that you're not particularly
- 03:40 interested in backing up, you could choose to deselect pictures, for example.
- 03:43 Now, your OneDrive folders will synchronize and back up automatically.
- 03:47 But if you want to do a quick back up, we have a Start back up button just here.
- 03:52 And it will just reupload all of the files within those folders to OneDrive to make
- 03:57 sure we have the most up-to-date copy available on our back up.
- 04:01 So now I'm getting a message that OneDrive is starting to back up my files, so
- 04:05 I could view the sync process if I wanted to.
- 04:08 So this is just going to pop open that window again.
- 04:10 I can see that some files aren't being backed up, and these are my video files,
- 04:14 so I'm just going to skip on this one.
- 04:16 We can see the rest of them are currently very quickly uploading to OneDrive.
- 04:21 So that is pretty much how you can manage backing up your files to the cloud.
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