What I Use: OneDrive Folder Backup (Premium)

I use OneDrive extensively. Thanks to my Microsoft 365 Family account and its addition 1 TB of data per user, I’m storing my entire life in OneDrive, from my entire personal photo collection to my entire work archives dating back 30 years.

On PCs, I use Files on Demand to ensure that my “To do” folder, which contains the articles and article series that I’m currently working on, and my “Book,” folder, which contains the Windows 10 Field Guide, are synced to every PC I use. And I use OneDrive’s File Explorer integration to pin those folders I access regularly---Book, To do, and a folder named like “2021-04” (for April 2021) where I archive the articles and other documents and files that I’m done working on---to the Quick access list in the navigation pane.

This system is key to my workflow, which I wrote more about that in Live the Thin Client Dream with OneDrive (Premium).

But now I’m adding another OneDrive feature to my workflow. Major changes like this come hard, at least for me. And while this change may not seem major to you, again, it is to me. Anyway, here we go.

In addition to letting you sync some or all of the contents of your OneDrive cloud storage to any PC, the OneDrive client in Windows 10 also offers other related features, including Personal Vault, automatic photo/video save when a camera is connected, and automatic screenshot saving and sync. But the feature I’m interested in today is called---by me, at least, the real name is unclear---Folder Backup. It lets you sync the contents of three system folders---Desktop, Documents, and/or Pictures---that sit outside of the OneDrive folder structure in your PC’s file system.

That distinction is important and, to head off the obvious question, no, you can’t arbitrarily sync other folders of your choosing through OneDrive. At least not using Folder Backup. All you can do is choose which of those three folders to sync.

To do so, open OneDrive settings and navigate to the Backup tab. Then, click Manage backup in the “Important PC Folders” section. The Manage folder backup window appears.

The first time you open this window, all three folders---Desktop, Documents, and Pictures---are selected, meaning that they will be backed up to OneDrive. And each displays the amount of storage space they will require in OneDrive. Deselect any folders you don’t want to sync---I’m only syncing Desktop because I use it as a scratch space---and then click Start backup.

To sync the contents of these folders to other PCs, you will need to manually enable backup on each PC, from what I can tell. When you do, you should immediately see shortcuts for any synced files appear on the desktop of the second PC.

Eventually, they’ll be synced and then any changes you make to any of those files, on any PC, will sync to all of the linked PCs. Likewise, as you add or remove files to the desktop, on any PC, those changes will replicate as expecte...