Why do you need to backup external hard drive?

We often backup files to external hard drive, sometimes for data security, sometimes to free up local memory, and sometimes for portability. However, to protect our data better, backing it up to another external hard drive is necessary.

External hard drives are also at risk of being lost or corrupted. As the data on your computer, data on an external hard drive can be subject to malware attacks, hardware failure, natural disasters, human theft, and more. If you backup external hard drive to another external hard drive, the damage will be less terrible and the data will be easier to recover.

2 ways to backup external hard drive to another

Many users try to back up external hard drive to another external hard drive using Windows built-in backup tool - Backup and Restore, but the results are not satisfactory. Windows Backup and Restore supports backing up your computer system and files to an external hard drive but does not allow you to back up from one external hard drive to another. And it does not support you to create a system image to a USB flash drive.

Thus, how to backup a hard drive to another hard drive? Here we provide 2 methods for it and you can choose from them according to your needs.

Way 1. Copy and paste files manually

Basically, you can learn how to backup hard drive to another hard drive manually, which just needs a few clicks with your mouse. Here are the basic steps to do it:

1. Connect your external hard drives to your computer.

2. Select the files on the source drive, and right-click on them to choose copy.

3. Then go to the destination drive to paste them there.

Way 2. Use free external hard drive backup software for automated backup

Sometimes, you don't have enough time and energy to back up your files manually, and there is a risk of missing out on manual backups. So, how to backup a drive to another drive automatically? Maybe you can try free external hard drive backup software like AOMEI Backupper Standard. It is a professional backup service for devices based on Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, which can help you set up an automated backup from one external hard drive to another external hard drive.

Let’s see how to backup one external hard drive to another via AOMEI Backupper Standard:

1. Download the AOMEI Backupper Standard client on your computer and launch it.

2. On the Backup main page, click the Disk Backup button.

3. Then, click the Add Disk button to add the external hard drive which is regarded as the source disk.

4. To set up an automated backup from an external hard drive to another, you can select Schedule to choose a backup frequency, such as Daily/Weekly/Monthly or use Event trigger, USB plug in. The last two options are not for free.

5. Next, you can click the folder icon to choose the external hard drive to be the destination drive. After that, click the Start Backup button to backup external hard drive to another hard drive easily.

In addition, you can also use the following features in AOMEI Backupper Standard:

• Options: You can enable email notification, use High compression level, Intelligent Sector Backup for free and so on. And pay for the Enable encryption for backup.

• Backup Scheme: You can choose different backup solutions: Full Backup/Incremental Backup/Differential Backup. Differential Backup is a paid feature.

Another backup solution for external hard drive - cloud backup

In addition to backing up external hard drive to another hard drive, you can also use another backup solution - cloud backup external drive. Backing up external hard drive to cloud can protect your important data better if your external hard drive is attacked or lost. Besides, you can access your files without bringing your external hard drive everywhere.

For this, we recommend a free cloud backup service - CBackup to you. CBackup allows you to add different cloud drive accounts to it, including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive. So you can backup external hard drive to Google Drive or other cloud drives directly. You can use CBackup on any device based on the Windows system. Now, let’s see how to backup external hard drive to cloud, here we take Google Drive as an example:

1. Download and install the CBackup desktop app on your Windows PC. Sign up for a new CBackup account, then launch the application and log into it.

2. In the Storage section, and add a Google Drive account that you want to regard as the backup destination.

3. Select Backup > Backup PC to Public Cloud to create a backup task for your external hard drive.

4. You can change the Task Name according to your backup contents. Then add files on your external hard drive as the backup source. Select the Google Drive account you added as the backup destination. Finally, click the Start Backup button to backup external hard drive to Google Drive.

⇒ Note: Go to the Settings part, and you can make the backup task regular and automatic. There are 4 schedule modes you can choose.

With CBackup, you can try some other useful features as below for free:

♦ Free cloud storage: CBackup gives each account 5GB of free cloud storage to store data. You can use CBackup Cloud to be the alternative to your cloud drive.

♦ Combine cloud storage: CBackup allows you to get more free cloud storage space. It allows you to merge different cloud storage accounts to one combined cloud to form a larger cloud storage space.

♦ Cloud to cloud sync: You can use the cloud to cloud sync feature to transfer files between cloud and cloud, which helps you to transfer data between different accounts of Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and FTP/SFTP.

Final words

That’s all about backup external hard drive to another external hard drive. You can choose to set up backups manually or automatically. Furthermore, you can backup your external hard drive to cloud drives for data security as well.