I have talked about how I automatically backup my files from my server, but one thing I have discussed is how I backup my files from my Windows 10 desktop.
Most of my important files are stored on my server, but I do have some data files, like game related files, that I would like to backup in case the hard drives in my desktop crash or begin causes data corruption in my files.
In keeping with my automatic backup policy, I wanted to have my Windows 10 desktop automatically backup my files to the server, which will then backup to Backblaze. With Windows 10, it is actually easy to do.
The steps below explain how to backup files on Windows 10 automatically.
- Determine where you want to store the files. If you plan to backup the files to an external hard drive, then connect the hard drive into the Windows 10 computer. For network shares, you will need to setup the share on the machine that contains the share and set the permissions.
- On the Windows 10 computer, click the Start button and select Settings->Update & Security->Backup.
- Click the Add a drive option.
- Select either the external drive or a network path for your backups.
Note:
If you chose to use a network path to store your backups then you may be prompted to enter the user ID and password to use to connect to the network share. Check the remember checkbox to ensure the credentials are stored so they will always be used to connect to the share and your backups will work without any interruption.
- By default, the backups will run every hour and will keep the backups forever. If you you would like to change this, click the More options option.
- From the More options window you can change how often the backup is run, how long to keep the backups, additional folders to backup and which folders to exclude. Pay attention to which folders are being backed up and ensure that all folders you want to backup are included.
- From this point you can click the Back up now button or wait for the next scheduled backup.
At this point your Windows 10 computer will now automatically backup your data to the location you specified, at the scheduled time you specified.
As I mentioned earlier, I backup my files to my server, which will automatically make of a second copy of the files on a second external hard drive, and then backup to the cloud with Backblaze.
Do you automatically backup your computer? If so, how do you do it?