Back Up Files to an External Drive in Windows 11 & 10 (Free, Built In)

To back up your files to an external drive in Windows 11 or 10 without extra software, plug in the drive, open Control Panel > System and Security > File History, and click Turn on. From then on, Windows copies your Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music and Desktop to the drive every hour while it is connected, and keeps older versions of each file so you can roll back a mistake from last week. Here is what surprises most people: Windows 11's Settings app has no option for backing up to an external drive at all. Its "Windows Backup" only backs up to OneDrive, which is why so many people think Windows 11 removed local backup. It did not. File History still works perfectly; it just lives in Control Panel. For a copy of the entire PC, including Windows and apps, the older System Image tool is still there too, and this page covers both, plus a one-line command for manual copies.

Ethan's neighbor, a retired teacher, kept twenty years of family photos and her finished memoir on one laptop. When the laptop's drive started making a clicking sound, she panicked and called Ethan, who brought her to Jake's shop with an external drive she had bought "for backups" two years earlier and never opened. Jake plugged it in, turned on File History, and pointed it at her Pictures and Documents. The first backup ran for an hour. Three days later the laptop's drive failed completely. Every photo and every chapter came back from the external drive in an afternoon. That is where this page starts: the backup that runs itself, the full system image, the manual copy, how to restore each one, and the habits that make sure a backup actually exists on the day you need it.

A backup is a second copy of your files somewhere other than your computer. Drives fail, laptops get dropped, stolen or soaked in coffee, and ransomware encrypts everything it can reach. An external drive costs less than a dinner out and turns all of those from disasters into inconveniences. The tools below are all built into Windows and free.

Windows backup options compared: which one does what

Windows has four different backup-related features, with confusingly similar names. Knowing which is which is half the job.

For most people, the right combination is File History to an external drive for daily protection, plus an occasional system image before big changes. OneDrive is a valuable extra copy in the cloud. System Restore is useful, but it does not protect your files at all, which our guide to System Restore points explains.

What to back up, and where it actually lives

"My files" means different things to different people, and a backup only protects what it includes. This table covers the things people most often want back after a failure, and the simplest way to protect each.

Things people forget until it is too late

Every repair shop hears the same regrets. The most common: files saved straight onto the C: drive or into a program's own folder instead of Documents; a single Outlook data file holding ten years of email; two-factor authentication codes that lived only on the lost phone; game saves that were never in the cloud; and the only copy of a family video sitting in the Downloads folder. Spend five minutes looking for those on your own PC, and move or add them so the backup includes them.

Choosing and preparing the external drive

Almost any external drive works, but a few choices make backups faster and more reliable.

Size. Get a drive at least twice the size of the data you want to back up, so File History has room for older versions. If your Documents, Pictures and Desktop add up to 200 GB, a 500 GB or 1 TB drive is comfortable. For system images, add the used space on your C: drive. Our guide to finding what uses your storage helps you add it up.

Type. External SSDs are faster, quieter and more shock-resistant; traditional hard drives are cheaper per terabyte. Either is fine for File History. A USB flash drive works in a pinch, but they are slower and less reliable for regular backups.

Format. Most new drives come formatted as exFAT, which works on both Windows and Mac. For a Windows-only backup drive, NTFS is the better choice: it handles large files and permissions properly, and the system image tool requires NTFS. To reformat, open File Explorer, right-click the drive, choose Format, pick NTFS, and click Start. Formatting erases the drive, so do it only on a new or empty one.

Encryption. A backup drive holds the same private files as your PC, and it is easier to lose. On Windows Pro, right-click the drive and choose Turn on BitLocker to encrypt it with a password. Store the recovery key safely; our guide to BitLocker recovery keys shows where.

How to set up File History on Windows 11 and 10

1. Plug in the external drive and wait for it to appear in File Explorer.
2. Open Control Panel: press the Windows key, type Control Panel and press Enter.
3. Go to System and Security > File History. You can also type File History into the Start menu search.
4. File History shows your external drive under "Copy files to". If it shows a different drive, click Select drive and choose the right one.
5. Click Turn on. The first backup starts immediately and copies everything, so it can take from minutes to hours depending on how much you have.

On Windows 10, the same feature is also in Settings: Settings > Update & Security > Backup > Add a drive, with a "More options" link for the folder list. On Windows 11, Control Panel is the place.

What File History backs up

By default, File History copies your libraries and user folders: Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, Desktop, Contacts and Favorites, plus files from OneDrive that are stored on the PC. It does not back up Windows itself, installed programs, or files outside your user folders, such as a folder you created directly on the C: drive.

To include another folder, the simplest way is to add it to a library: in File Explorer, right-click the folder, choose Show more options > Include in library, and pick a library such as Documents. File History then backs it up. To leave a folder out, use Exclude folders on the File History page.

Adjust how often and how long

Click Advanced settings on the File History page to change two things. Save copies of files sets how often File History checks for changes: every hour by default, from every ten minutes to daily. Keep saved versions sets how long older versions are kept: "Forever" by default, or until space is needed, or for a set period. On a smaller drive, "Until space is needed" keeps the drive from filling up.

How to restore files from File History

Restore one file or folder

1. In File Explorer, go to the folder that holds, or held, the file.
2. Right-click the folder (or the file, if it still exists) and choose Show more options > Restore previous versions. On Windows 10, choose Restore previous versions directly.
3. Pick a version by date, then click Open to look at it, or Restore to put it back. Use the arrow next to Restore and choose Restore to to save it somewhere else and keep the current copy.

Browse everything that was backed up

Open Control Panel > File History > Restore personal files. A window shows your backed-up folders as they were at a point in time. The arrows at the bottom move back and forward through the backups. Select what you want and click the green restore button, or right-click it for Restore to a different location.

Restore to a new PC

Plug the old backup drive into the new PC, turn on File History, choose Select drive, pick the drive, and when Windows asks whether to use an existing backup, select it. Then use Restore personal files to bring everything across. Alternatively, open the drive in File Explorer: File History stores ordinary copies of your files in a folder named FileHistory, with a date stamp added to each file name, so even without File History you can copy files out by hand.

Back up the whole PC: create a system image

File History protects your files. A system image protects everything: Windows, programs, settings and files, as one snapshot of the drive. If your drive dies, you put in a new one, restore the image, and the PC is back exactly as it was on the day of the backup, without reinstalling anything.

1. Plug in an NTFS-formatted external drive with enough free space for everything on C:.
2. Open Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore (Windows 7). The name is old, but the tool works on Windows 11 and 10.
3. Click Create a system image on the left.
4. Choose On a hard disk and pick your external drive.
5. Confirm the drives to include; the system drives are selected automatically.
6. Click Start backup. It can take an hour or more. Windows may offer to create a system repair disc at the end; on modern PCs, a recovery USB drive (search for Create a recovery drive) is the better choice.

Microsoft no longer develops this tool and calls it deprecated, but it remains in Windows 11 and still works. Treat it as a reliable occasional snapshot, for example before a major Windows upgrade, rather than a daily backup.

Create a system image from the command line

The same image can be made with one command in an administrator Command Prompt, which is handy for scheduling:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet

Replace E: with your external drive's letter. -allCritical includes everything needed to restore Windows, and -quiet runs without prompts.

How to restore a system image

Restoring an image replaces everything on the target drive with the snapshot, so use it to recover a dead or replaced drive, not to fetch one file.

1. Connect the drive that holds the image.
2. Start Windows' recovery environment: from Windows, hold Shift and click Restart; if Windows will not start, boot from a recovery USB drive or Windows installation media and choose Repair your computer.
3. Choose Troubleshoot > Advanced options > See more recovery options > System Image Recovery.
4. Select the image and follow the wizard. The target drive is erased and restored.

If the drive is encrypted with BitLocker, have the recovery key ready before starting. After restoring, run Windows Update to bring the PC up to date from the day of the image.

Manual backup: copy and paste, or robocopy

Sometimes you just want a copy of your files on a drive, right now, with no setup. Dragging folders in File Explorer works, but it stops on errors, does not skip unchanged files, and is slow with thousands of small files. Windows' built-in robocopy command does it properly.

robocopy "%USERPROFILE%\Documents" "E:\Backup\Documents" /E /R:1 /W:1 /LOG:E:\Backup\log.txt
robocopy "%USERPROFILE%\Pictures"  "E:\Backup\Pictures"  /E /R:1 /W:1 /LOG+:E:\Backup\log.txt

/E copies all subfolders, including empty ones. /R:1 /W:1 retries a locked file once after one second instead of waiting forever. /LOG writes a report you can check afterward. Run the same command again later, and robocopy copies only new and changed files, so repeat backups take minutes.

You will see /MIR recommended online. It makes the backup an exact mirror, which also deletes files from the backup when you delete them from the PC. That means an accidental deletion, or ransomware, spreads to the backup the next time it runs. For a backup, /E is the safer choice.

Run your manual backup automatically

A robocopy command saved as a .cmd file can run on a schedule with Task Scheduler, so it happens without you remembering.

1. Save your robocopy lines in a text file named backup.cmd, for example in Documents.
2. Search for Task Scheduler in Start and open it.
3. Click Create Basic Task, name it "Weekly backup", choose Weekly, and pick a day and time when the drive is usually connected.
4. Choose Start a program and browse to backup.cmd.
5. Finish, then right-click the task and choose Run once to test it.

If the drive is not connected when the task runs, robocopy simply fails and tries again next week. Check the log file now and then to be sure backups are actually happening.

Backing up to a network drive or NAS

If you have a network storage box (a NAS) or a shared folder on another PC, File History can back up there instead of a USB drive, which means backups run without plugging anything in. On the File History page, click Select drive, then Add network location, and browse to the shared folder, or type its address in the form \\NAS\Backups. Windows asks for the share's username and password the first time.

Network backups are convenient, but remember the ransomware point: a network share that your PC can always write to is reachable by anything running on the PC. A NAS that keeps its own snapshots, read-only copies taken on a schedule, closes that gap, and most home NAS devices offer the feature. For robocopy, the same address works as a destination, such as robocopy "%USERPROFILE%\Documents" "\\NAS\Backups\Documents" /E.

Getting phone photos into your backup

For many families, the most precious photos live on phones, outside any PC backup. Bringing them onto the PC means File History protects them too.

• Cable import. Connect the phone by USB, unlock it, allow access, and use the Photos app's Import button to copy new photos into Pictures.
• Cloud camera upload. OneDrive, Google Photos and iCloud apps can upload camera photos automatically; on the PC, those folders then sync down, where File History can include the downloaded copies.
• Phone Link on Windows 11 lets you browse recent phone photos and save the ones you want.

Whatever route you choose, check now and then that the newest phone photos actually appear on the PC and in the backup. Phones are lost and broken far more often than PCs.

Back up before upgrading or resetting Windows

Big changes are when backups pay for themselves. Before a Windows feature upgrade, a reset, a new drive or sending the PC for repair, take three steps: let File History finish a fresh backup, create a system image if you want the option of going back exactly, and note anything not covered by either, such as license keys for paid software. Even Reset this PC with the "Keep my files" option keeps documents but removes apps and settings, and things can go wrong partway. A ten-minute backup beforehand removes the risk entirely. Our guide to finding your Windows version is useful for noting which version you are upgrading from.

OneDrive and the Windows Backup app: where they fit

Windows 11's Windows Backup app, and the matching page in Settings > Accounts > Windows backup, back up your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders to OneDrive, along with Windows settings, your list of installed apps and some saved credentials. It is excellent for one thing: setting up a new PC, where signing in brings your files, wallpaper, Wi-Fi networks and app list back automatically.

It is not a replacement for an external backup, for three reasons. Free OneDrive accounts have limited space, so large photo collections do not fit without a paid plan. OneDrive is sync, not backup: delete a file on the PC and it is deleted in OneDrive too, after a recycle-bin grace period. And it needs a Microsoft account and an internet connection. Use both: OneDrive for convenience and an off-site copy, File History for versioned local protection. If OneDrive is syncing more than you want, our guide to pausing or stopping OneDrive sync helps.

How long a backup takes

The first backup copies everything, so it is by far the longest; later backups copy only what changed and usually take minutes. The connection matters most. A USB 3 port, often marked blue or with "SS", moves data several times faster than an old USB 2 port. As a rough guide, 200 GB to an external hard drive over USB 3 takes around half an hour to an hour; over USB 2, several hours. External SSDs are faster still, and huge numbers of tiny files, such as a big photo library, take longer than the same amount of data in large videos.

Plug the drive into a USB 3 port directly on the PC rather than through a hub, start the first backup when you do not need the PC for a while, and leave it to finish. If the PC goes to sleep, File History simply resumes next time.

Emergency: backing up a drive that is failing right now

If your PC is warning that a drive is failing, files are vanishing, or the drive is clicking, the priorities change. The goal is to get the most important files off before the drive stops altogether.

1. Stop using the PC for anything else. Every extra minute of activity wears a failing drive.
2. Copy the irreplaceable first. Family photos, documents you cannot recreate, then everything else. Do not start with a full system image; it reads the whole drive and may not finish.
3. Use robocopy with no retries so it skips unreadable files instead of hanging on them: robocopy "%USERPROFILE%\Pictures" "E:\Rescue\Pictures" /E /R:0 /W:0 /LOG:E:\Rescue\log.txt. The log lists any files it could not read.
4. Do not run disk repair tools first. Utilities such as chkdsk write to the drive and can make recovery harder. Copy first, repair later.
5. If the drive clicks, grinds or is not detected, stop. Mechanical failures get worse with every attempt. A professional data recovery service has the best chance with a drive that has not been run to destruction.

Ethan's neighbor was lucky: her backup ran three days before the failure. Most people find the warning signs too late, which is the strongest argument for setting up File History today.

Online backup services

Beyond OneDrive, there are dedicated online backup services that continuously copy your files to their data centers, often with unlimited or very large storage for a yearly fee. Their strength is the off-site copy: nothing to plug in, nothing to remember, and protection against fire and theft. Their weaknesses are a subscription, a slow first upload over home internet, and a slow full restore of large amounts of data. They suit people with big photo or video collections who want a hands-off third copy. Whichever you choose, check how long deleted files are kept, whether older versions are kept, and whether your files are encrypted before they leave your PC.

The 3-2-1 rule, in plain words

Backup professionals use a simple rule: keep 3 copies of anything important, on 2 different kinds of storage, with 1 copy somewhere else. For a home user that translates neatly:

• Copy 1: the files on your PC.
• Copy 2: File History on an external drive at home.
• Copy 3: OneDrive or another cloud service, or a second external drive kept at a relative's house or at work.

The off-site copy protects against what an external drive at home cannot: fire, flood, theft of both the laptop and the drive beside it, and ransomware that encrypts every drive connected at the time. Swapping two external drives once a month, one at home and one elsewhere, is a cheap and effective way to get there.

A one-page backup plan for a household

If you look after the computers for a whole family, write the plan down so it survives busy months. A workable version fits on one page:

• Daily, automatic: OneDrive or another cloud service syncs Desktop, Documents and Pictures on every PC.
• Weekly: each PC's external drive is plugged in on a set day, such as Sunday evening, for File History to catch up, then unplugged.
• Monthly: one test restore per PC, and phones' photos imported or confirmed in the cloud.
• Twice a year: a system image of each PC, and a swap of an off-site drive kept with a relative.
• Written down: where each backup lives, the BitLocker recovery keys, and the passwords for cloud accounts, kept somewhere safe that someone else in the family knows about.

The last line matters more than it seems. A perfect backup that nobody else can find or unlock does not help the family if the person who set it up is not there.

Protecting your backups from ransomware

Ransomware encrypts files on the PC and on any drive it can reach, including a backup drive that is plugged in. Three habits keep your backup safe.

1. Disconnect the drive when the backup is done. File History catches up automatically the next time you plug it in. A drive that is not connected cannot be encrypted.
2. Keep versions. File History's older versions mean that even if encrypted files are backed up once, the clean versions from before are still there.
3. Turn on Controlled folder access in Windows Security, under Virus & threat protection > Ransomware protection. It blocks unknown programs from changing files in protected folders. Some legitimate apps need to be allowed manually, which is a small price.

File History not working? Common problems and fixes

1. "Reconnect your drive" messages. The backup drive is unplugged or has a new drive letter. Plug it in; if the letter changed, choose Select drive and pick it again.
2. The drive is full. In Advanced settings, set Keep saved versions to "Until space is needed", or click Clean up versions to delete old ones.
3. File History is turned off and will not turn on. Check the drive is NTFS or exFAT and not write-protected; our guide to removing USB write protection covers that. On work PCs, a policy may disable File History.
4. Some files are not backed up. They are outside the backed-up folders. Add their folder to a library, or move them into Documents.
5. Backups stopped months ago. File History only runs when the drive is connected. Set a monthly reminder to plug it in, or keep it connected and accept the ransomware trade-off.
6. Restore previous versions shows nothing. File History was not on, or the drive is not connected. Plug in the backup drive first.

Test your backup: the step everyone skips

A backup you have never restored from is a hope, not a backup. Once a month, or at least after setting it up, do a two-minute test.

1. Pick a random file, such as a photo from last year.
2. Restore it to a different folder with Restore to.
3. Open the restored copy and check it is complete and readable.

Also open the backup drive in File Explorer once in a while and check the dates on the most recent files. If the newest backup is from four months ago, you have found the problem on a good day instead of a bad one.

Check the backup drive's health, and when to replace it

External drives wear out like any other. A drive used only for backups, plugged in occasionally, often lasts many years, but it is wise to check it now and then and replace it every four or five years. Windows can report a drive's own health assessment in PowerShell:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus

"Healthy" and "OK" are what you want to see. Anything else, along with new clicking noises, very slow copies or files that will not open from the backup, means it is time for a new drive. When you replace it, keep the old one until the new drive holds a complete first backup, and then wipe the old one before recycling it, because it holds all your private files.

Still on Windows 10?

Everything on this page works on Windows 10 too: File History is available in both Settings (Update & Security > Backup) and Control Panel, Backup and Restore creates system images, and robocopy is identical. If your Windows 10 PC is not receiving security updates any more, a good backup matters even more, both as protection and as the first step toward moving to a newer PC.

Backing up on Kali, Linux and Mac

For readers who also run Linux or a Mac, the same principles apply with different tools. On Linux, including Kali, rsync -av --progress ~/Documents /media/you/Backup/ copies files and skips unchanged ones on later runs, much like robocopy. Desktop tools such as Déjà Dup give scheduled, versioned backups with a graphical interface, and Timeshift takes system snapshots, the Linux equivalent of a system image. On a Mac, Time Machine is the built-in equivalent of File History: plug in a drive, and macOS offers to use it for hourly versioned backups. One drive can't easily serve both Windows and Mac backups at the same time without separate partitions, so a dedicated drive per system is simplest.

For IT admins: backups for small offices

Personal files. In small businesses, OneDrive Known Folder Move, which redirects Desktop, Documents and Pictures into OneDrive for Business, is the most dependable protection for user files, because it needs no action from users and supports version history. Pair it with retention policies so deleted files can be recovered for a set period.

Machines. For PCs that hold data outside user folders, schedule wbadmin images or robocopy jobs to a network share with Task Scheduler or your management tool, and keep the backup share's permissions tight: ransomware running as a user should not be able to write to it. Read-only snapshots on the storage side, or an immutable cloud copy, close that gap.

File History by policy. File History can be disabled by Group Policy under Windows Components > File History if you rely on central backups and do not want users writing company data to personal USB drives. Decide deliberately: blocking it removes a safety net, while allowing it can scatter company data onto unmanaged devices.

Backing up to an external drive: frequently asked questions

Ethan's neighbor now has a small ritual. On the first Sunday of each month she plugs in the external drive, makes a cup of tea while File History catches up, then restores one random photo to check it opens, and unplugs the drive. Her memoir has since been published, and she likes to say the most important tool in writing it was a drive she never thought about. That is the goal of every backup: not to think about it, and still have everything on the day the clicking starts.

Revision note. Written October 2, 2026, rewriting our 2015 guide for Windows 11 and 10. Go plug in that drive today; future you will be grateful.