How to back up OneDrive to an external hard drive

Is OneDrive a backup?

Not by itself. OneDrive keeps the same files on your PC and in the cloud: delete, overwrite or damage a file on one side and the other side follows within seconds. The OneDrive recycle bin keeps deleted files for 30 days on a personal account, and Office files have previous versions, but neither is a second copy that you hold. A backup is a copy the first one cannot touch: on a disk of your own, kept up to date.

Why copying the OneDrive folder is not enough

With Files On-Demand, which is always on in recent versions of OneDrive, many files are online-only: a placeholder with a blue cloud icon that downloads only when you open it. When you copy the folder, Windows has to download each of them on the spot. On a large account the copy crawls, Windows shows notifications about automatic file downloads, and if OneDrive is not running the copy stops with error 0x8007016A. Worse, a copy that stops halfway looks complete at a glance.

Way 1: make everything local, then copy

1. Connect the external drive and check it has room for your whole OneDrive.
2. Bring the files to the PC. In File Explorer, right-click the OneDrive folder and choose "Always keep on this device". Wait until every icon is a solid green circle.
3. Copy the OneDrive folder, or the folders inside it, to the external drive.
4. Compare. Right-click the source folder, Properties, and note the number of files and the size. Do the same on the copy. They must match.

The limit is drive C:. "Always keep on this device" stores everything on the PC first, so drive C: needs room for your whole OneDrive. A 1 TB OneDrive does not fit on a 256 GB laptop drive. In that case go one folder at a time: keep one folder on the device, copy it, check it, then right-click it and choose "Free up space" before the next one.

Way 2: download from onedrive.com

On onedrive.com you can select folders and choose Download: they arrive as ZIP archives in your Downloads folder, on drive C: again, and you extract them onto the external drive. It works for a few folders. For a whole account it means large archives, downloads that can break halfway, and nothing that tells you if a file is missing.

Way 3: let Salvako make the copy and check every file

Salvako copies your OneDrive to the disk you choose, internal or USB, online-only files included, without filling drive C:. It asks OneDrive for a few files at a time (at most 256 MB on the way), copies them, compares each copy with the original by size and SHA-256 fingerprint, and gives the space back by setting them online-only again. If the PC switches off, it resumes where it stopped. At the end you get a receipt: what was copied, where, and what was not, and why.

Which drive to use

• External hard drive or SSD: the simplest choice. Format it as NTFS or exFAT.
• USB stick: fine for a small OneDrive. A stick formatted as FAT32 cannot hold a file larger than 4 GB, so long videos fail to copy.
• NAS (Synology, QNAP and others): open its shared folder in File Explorer and copy there with way 1. Salvako copies to disks connected to the PC, not to network folders.
• A second internal disk: works too, but it is in the same PC: a theft or a fire takes both.

How much space you need

As much as your OneDrive holds: up to 5 GB on the free plan, up to 1 TB or more with Microsoft 365. Photos and videos from the phone, in Pictures, Camera Roll, are usually the largest part. Salvako's free Check tells you the exact number before you start.

Keep the copy up to date

A copy made in March does not protect what you wrote in October. Repeat the copy regularly, or let a tool do it. Salvako's guardian updates the copy every few hours: it copies only what is new or changed and keeps the earlier versions of changed files for 90 days.

How to check the copy

Right-click the source folder, Properties: Windows shows the number of files and the total size. Do the same on the copy. If the numbers differ, something is missing. Equal numbers are a good sign, not a proof: a file can be there and still be damaged. That is why Salvako compares each file by its SHA-256 fingerprint.

How Salvako does it for you

The free Check reads, without changing anything, where every file really is, how many are online-only and how much space the copy needs. The verified copy then brings every file to the drive you choose and checks it, with a receipt at the end. Then the guardian keeps the copy up to date and warns you when files become online-only again or the storage gets close to the limit. You keep using OneDrive as before, and your files never leave your PC.