How to Back Up Your PC Properly: Cloud, External Drive, or Both

I've had this conversation hundreds of times. Someone brings me their PC, the hard drive has failed, or they've been hit by ransomware, or they've accidentally deleted something important. I ask if they have a backup. They already know the answer.

Everyone knows they should back up. Almost nobody actually does it, until the day they lose something they can't get back. Family photos, years of documents, university coursework the night before a deadline. I've seen it all.

And then there are the people who thought they were covered. One customer replaced her broken iPhone, started restoring it from iCloud, and found the last four years of family photos weren't there. Her free 5GB had quietly filled up in 2020 and the sync had been failing ever since. We got most of them back in the end, from email attachments, WhatsApp chats and her old laptop's cache. But it shouldn't have come to that.

The good news is that backing up properly is easier than most people think, and most of it can run on its own. Set it up once, check it now and again, and get on with your life.

What Actually Needs Backing Up?

You don't need to back up your entire computer, just the stuff you can't replace. Windows can be reinstalled. Programs can be re-downloaded. Your personal files can't.

On Windows, almost everything you care about is in one place: C:\Users\YourName. Inside that folder you'll find:

• Desktop: where most people dump everything
• Documents: Word files, spreadsheets, PDFs
• Downloads: full of things you meant to move somewhere safe
• Pictures: photos, screenshots, phone backups
• Videos: home videos, screen recordings

Two things people forget. Browser bookmarks sync automatically if you're signed into Chrome or Edge with a Google or Microsoft account; if you're not signed in, they only exist on that machine. And app data, things like Outlook email archives (.pst files), accounting software databases or game saves, often lives in the hidden AppData folder. If you rely on specialist software, find out where it keeps its data.

The Simple Rule: Two Copies, Two Places

The IT industry has something called the "3-2-1 rule": three copies, on two different types of storage, with one off-site. For most people at home that works out as your files on your PC, an external drive, and a cloud service. If you want the even simpler version:

Keep two copies of your important files, in two different places.

One copy is on your PC already. The other goes somewhere else: an external hard drive, a cloud service, or ideally both. An external drive sitting on the same desk as your PC won't help if the house floods, gets burgled or catches fire. That's what the cloud is for.

Option 1: Cloud Backup (Easiest)

This is the best starting point for most people because once it's set up, it's automatic. Your files sync in the background and you don't have to remember anything.

The hard part is picking a service. Here's the short version:

• OneDrive if you use Windows and Microsoft Office. Best value if you already pay for Microsoft 365.
• Google Drive if you live in Gmail, use Google Docs, or have an Android phone. Biggest free tier.
• iCloud if you have an iPhone, iPad or Mac, especially if you have all three.

Use a mixture of everything? Pick the one that matches the device where most of your stuff actually lives.

OneDrive Best for Windows users

OneDrive is built into Windows 11. (It's on Windows 10 too, but Windows 10 support ended in October 2025, and even the free extended security updates for home users stop in October 2027. If you're still on it, backing up comes before anything else.)

You get 5GB free, which is enough for documents and not much else. Standalone, 100GB costs £1.99/month. The real value is Microsoft 365, the subscription you pay for Word and Excel, which includes 1TB of OneDrive. Most people paying for it have no idea that storage is sitting there. If you'd have bought Office anyway, OneDrive is effectively free.

To turn on OneDrive folder backup, go to Settings → Accounts → Windows backup:

Toggle on Desktop, Documents and Pictures. From then on, everything in those folders goes up to your Microsoft account. If the PC dies tomorrow, sign into OneDrive on another device and it's all there. Edits sync both ways, so a file changed on your phone or a second PC shows up everywhere.

Files On-Demand is the clever bit. Files appear in File Explorer without using any disk space until you open them, which on a laptop with a small SSD is worth having on its own.

One thing to watch: OneDrive loves to "help". Windows 11 will often switch on folder backup during setup without making it obvious, and people then wonder why their Desktop has moved. If you don't want a folder synced, open OneDrive settings, go to Backup, Manage backup, and untick it.

Google Drive Best free tier

Google Drive is the most generous of the three, and because it's browser-based it works the same on Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android and Chromebook.

The free tier is 15GB, shared with Gmail attachments and Google Photos. Paid plans (Google One) start at £1.59/month for 100GB, £2.49/month for 200GB, or £7.99/month for 2TB. Docs, Sheets and Slides are free, so if you're happy to ditch Microsoft Office you never need to pay for a productivity licence again. Sharing a file is just a link.

The catch: 15GB sounds like a lot until your Gmail has a decade of attachments in it. Hit the limit and Gmail stops receiving new mail until you clear space. The web app also won't back up your PC folders by itself. For that you need Google Drive for Desktop, a separate install that puts a synced folder on your PC.

iCloud Best for Apple households

If everything you own has an Apple on the back, iCloud is invisible in the best way. Photos from your iPhone land on your Mac within seconds, and messages, notes and Safari tabs just turn up everywhere. On a Mac, go to System Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → iCloud Drive and turn on Desktop & Documents.

You get 5GB free. iCloud+ starts at £0.99/month for 50GB, £2.99/month for 200GB, or £8.99/month for 2TB, and Family Sharing splits the 200GB and 2TB plans across up to six people. Restoring a lost or broken iPhone to a new one from iCloud is genuinely painless, provided the backup was actually running.

Which brings me to the downside. 5GB free is laughable in 2026. Most iPhone users run out within a year, and when it fills up the backups stop, which is exactly what happened to the customer I mentioned at the top. iCloud on Windows also works but it's clunky. Your photos will sync. You won't enjoy it.

Side by Side

What I Actually Recommend

Most people I see in St Helens run a Windows PC with an iPhone. For them the honest answer is Microsoft 365 for the PC and iCloud for the phone photos. That gets you Office, 1TB of cloud storage and a reliable photo backup without juggling three services.

Don't use Office at all and live in Gmail? Google One at £1.59/month for 100GB is excellent value and covers a typical family's photos and documents easily.

Option 2: External Hard Drive

Cloud is great for day-to-day protection, but a physical copy gives you an extra safety net. External drives are cheap: a 1TB portable drive costs around £40 to £50 and fits in your pocket.

The simple way: just copy your files

Plug in the drive, open your user folder (C:\Users\YourName), and copy your Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Downloads and Videos folders across. Done. Not automatic, but it works.

How big a drive? At least double the size of your data. With 200GB of files, get a 500GB or 1TB drive so there's room to keep more than one backup over time.

The automatic way: File History

Windows has a built-in feature called File History that backs up your files to an external drive whenever it's plugged in. It keeps versions too, so if you overwrite a document by mistake you can go back to an earlier one.

To set it up, search for "File History" in the Start menu, plug in your external drive, and click Turn on:

From then on, Windows backs up every hour (you can change that). Leave the drive plugged in, or plug it in regularly and it'll catch up.

Option 3: Both (Best)

The best setup is both. Cloud handles the day-to-day: every change syncs automatically and you can reach your files from anywhere. The external drive gives you a full local copy that's fast to restore from and works without internet.

Between them you're covered for different disasters. Cloud saves you when the hardware fails or the house burns down. The drive saves you when the internet's down, you get locked out of your cloud account, or something nasty spreads through your synced files. That last one needs its own section.

Sync Is Not Backup

This is the bit most backup guides skip. OneDrive, Google Drive and iCloud are sync services. They keep the cloud copy matching your PC. That's brilliant when your laptop dies, and useless when the problem is on the PC itself.

Delete a file on your PC and the sync service deletes it from the cloud too, then pushes that deletion to every other device you own. You usually get around 30 days in the cloud recycle bin to change your mind. After that it's gone everywhere.

Ransomware is worse. If it encrypts everything on your PC, those encrypted files can sync up and overwrite the good copies. OneDrive and Google Drive both keep version history, which helps, but restoring thousands of files one at a time is miserable and not guaranteed to work.

This is where the external drive earns its keep. If it was unplugged when the ransomware hit, those files are untouched.

Air-gapped and immutable backups

In IT, the gold standard against ransomware is an air-gapped or immutable backup. Air-gapped means physically disconnected from your computer and network, so ransomware can't reach it. Immutable means locked so it can't be changed or deleted for a set period, even by something with full access to your system. Some paid cloud backup services offer this.

At home, the practical version is simple: back up to an external drive and unplug it when you're done. Rotate between two drives (one plugged in, one in a drawer) and you've always got a clean copy, for the price of two drives.

What About Phone Photos?

For a lot of people, the photos on their phone are the most irreplaceable files they own. Phones get lost, stolen, dropped in the bath, or just stop working one day.

• iPhone: turn on iCloud Photos (Settings → Photos → iCloud Photos). Budget for the 50GB plan, because the free 5GB won't last
• Android: Google Photos is usually pre-installed. Open it, tap your profile picture and make sure backup is on. Remember the 15GB is shared with Gmail and Drive
• Either: OneDrive's camera upload works on iPhone and Android, so your phone photos end up in the same place as your PC files

How Often Should You Back Up?

With cloud sync, you don't think about it. Every save syncs.

With an external drive, once a month at minimum. Set a phone reminder if you have to. For important work (coursework, business stuff, creative projects) make it weekly. Ask yourself how much you'd lose if the PC died right now, and back up often enough that the answer is "not much".

If you're reading this because it's already too late, a drive has failed or a sync quietly stopped and the files are gone, I offer data recovery in St Helens and can often pull most of it back from a dead drive or wiped phone.

Mark

Mark has been fixing computers since the late '90s and went self-employed in 2008. Based in St Helens since 2013, he works evenings and weekends from his home in Laffak, doing friendly, affordable repairs for PCs, laptops, and Macs. See reviews on Google