How to Backup Entire Hard Drive to Cloud | Internal & External

It is a good idea to backup your entire hard drive to cloud for protection. You can learn to backup internal and external drives to Google Drive and OneDrive here. Keep reading to get an infallible guide.

By @Jonna Last Updated September 30, 2024

Can I backup my entire hard drive to the cloud?

"I am looking for a way to backup my entire hard drive to cloud. Is it possible? It is better to have unlimited storage or a minimum of 5TB storage on the cloud."

Advantages of backing up hard drives to clouds

In our daily life, it is common to encounter the problem of losing files stored on hard drives due to computer system crashes or virus attacks. If you save your important photos and videos on an external hard drive, they may also get lost as a result of accidental loss. To protect these vital items, you can backup your entire hard drive to cloud.

Cloud backup is a data storage method that is available to both individuals and businesses. It replicates a user's data over the network to an offsite server usually hosted by a service provider. Compared with the traditional local backup, cloud backup has the following features:

Secure and efficient. Platforms that offer cloud storage services offer a range of characteristics to ensure data security.

Easy to expand storage space. The initial cost of cloud backup is low and users can increase storage space on demand simply.

Broad accessibility. Data backed up to clouds can be accessed from any Internet-connected device.

Simple data recovery. If the original data is lost or corrupted, the data can be easily recovered from cloud.

3 effective methods to backup entire hard drive to cloud

Backing up your entire hard drive to cloud is not a challenge. Here, we will show you how to backup hard drives (external and internal) to Google Drive, OneDrive, and other cloud storage services without a hitch.

Way 1. Create a copy of hard drive via Google Drive

Google Drive allows you to backup files on the computer hard drive to Drive, as well as provides backup services for external hard drives. You can access these files across various devices. Here's how to back up your computer hard drive and backup external hard drive to Google Drive.

Part 1. Backup local hard drive to Google Drive

Step 1. Download and launch Drive for desktop on the computer.

Step 2. Select My Computer and click on Add Folder to pick the whole disk you want to backup.

Step 3. Select Sync with Google Drive to tap Done. Then, click Save to start backup disk to Drive cloud.

Part 2. Backup external hard drive to Google Drive

Step 1. Connect the external drive to your PC. Run the Drive for desktop application and click on the Add device button in the notification bar.

Step 2. Tap on Back up to Google Drive and click Save.

Way 2. Backup entire hard disk with OneDrive

OneDrive, a top-ranked cloud storage service, also provides hard drive backups. You can back up your hard drive files to the OneDrive cloud through the desktop OneDrive app, and you can also put files into the OneDrive folder directly so they automatically sync to all your devices.

Step 1. Download and open the OneDrive app on your PC. Click on the OneDrive icon on the task bar and select Settings.

Step 2. Head to the Backup section and click Manage backup.

Step 3. Select folders for backup on the next screen and click Start Backup to backup them to the OneDrive Cloud.

That is all about how to backup computer to cloud with OneDrive. If you need to backup an external hard drive to OneDrive, you can locate the OneDrive folder on your laptop, copy and paste files from the external hard drive to this OneDrive folder for backup.

Way 3. Auto Backup entire hard drive with cloud backup solution

If you want to use a reliable and efficient cloud backup tool to complete hard disk backup, CBackup is the right decision. It is a one-stop cloud backup service, which not only supports you to backup your local disk and external drive but also allows you to save data to different cloud storage service providers, like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.

With this tool, you can backup C drive to OneDrive and backup external drives to Google Drive easily. Apart from that, it supports you to backup your hard drive to CBackup Cloud (free 5GB, and up to 5TB at a reasonable price), its own cloud backup space with 5GB of free space. You can create automatic backups for files and do regular backups of them so that you never lose your valuable data.

If you are interested in how to backup a hard drive in Windows 10 and other operating systems using CBackup, please refer to the step-by-step guide below.

Step 1. Download CBackup on your PC. Sign up for a CBackup account to sign in to the client.

Download CBackup Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

Step 2. Click Backup on the left panel, and click Backup PC to CBackup Cloud.

Notes:✎...
To backup hard drives to Google Drive and other public clouds, you should choose the Backup PC to Public Cloud option here.

Step 3. Modify the task name. And select an entire drive(s) as the source, the CBackup Cloud selected by default, and press the Start Backup button to backup entire hard drive to cloud.

Notes:✎...
If you want to back up an external hard disk, you should connect it to your computer before you select directories to backup.
If you need more cloud storage for free, the Combine Cloud function on CBackup allows you to merge Google Drive accounts and other cloud drives to expand cloud space easily.

Conclusion

On this page, we present you with a comprehensive tutorial to backup an entire hard drive to cloud. Google Drive and OneDrive are both good methods of backing up hard drive data, but we highly recommend CBackup, a one-stop computer data backup tool. It is also a good cloud backup solution for external drives. We hope the content in this guide was helpful and thank you for reading.