Does OneDrive Have a Personal Vault?

Data security is a topic that everyone attaches great importance to nowadays, as the popularity of cloud storage makes users' data privacy at greater risk than traditional storage methods. Although OneDrive is not the most secure cloud storage service, because it is not zero-knowledge cloud storage that makes your data access very easy, OneDrive offers a Personal Vault, which provides a solution to keep your files safe with additional security measures.

On this page, we will talk about how to create Personal Vault in OneDrive. Besides, there is another secure method to encrypt backup files on OneDrive.

How Does OneDrive Personal Vault Work?

Personal Vault is a protected area in OneDrive that can only be accessed with a second step of identity verification, such as fingerprint, facial recognition scan, PIN codes, or phone or email codes. Typically, you can share OneDrive with another user easily via a link or through an email, while files stored in Personal Vault cannot be shared with anyone.

Personal Vault is automatically locked after a certain period of inactivity to fully protect your data security, so to prevent unauthorized access to critical files. And on Windows 10 PCs, you can let OneDrive store files in Personal Vault in a BitLocker-encrypted portion of your hard drive. In the following, we will elaborate on how to open Personal Vault in OneDrive.

How to Create Personal Vault in OneDrive

While it is simple for how to set up Personal Vault in OneDrive, it's worth mentioning the OneDrive Personal Vault storage limit for free accounts - only up to 3 files and less than the storage limit. If you are an Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Home subscriber, you can store as many files as you want in the Personal Vault folder, as long as you don't exceed your OneDrive storage limit.

If you want to bypass the Microsoft Personal Vault maximum 3 files limitation on Basic accounts, you could compress multiple files into a ZIP file, then upload ZIP file to OneDrive Personal Vault. In this way, multiple files can be identified as one compressed file. Next, let’s get down to business.

Step 1. Click the OneDrive icon in the notifications area. Tap on Help & Settings and select Unlock Personal Vault.

Step 2. Click Next and then Allow on the pop-up screens to permit your OneDrive Personal Vault to be set up.

Step 3. Follow the on-screen guide to verify your identity of the Microsoft account.

Step 4. Then, a notification from OneDrive should alert you that “Your Personal Vault is all set up”.

That’s all about how to set up Personal Vault in OneDrive. For how to use Personal Vault in OneDrive, you could locate the shortcut for the Personal Vault folder in the OneDrive folder or find the Personal Vault folder on the OneDrive website, then add any files to this folder as you want, just as you would with a regular folder. The difference is that you need to authenticate yourself before opening and accessing files in this folder.

Another Way to Encrypt Backup Files in OneDrive

In addition to relying on OneDrive Personal Vault, the reliable Windows backup and restore software AOMEI Backupper is available for you to encrypt backup files and folders from your computer to OneDrive. In the AOMEI Backupper Professional version, you are allowed to encrypt files during the process of backing up to OneDrive, and only people who know the password can restore the backups.

Thus, you can use OneDrive for backup and restore, and don’t need to worry about important data breaches. With this software, you are able to do system backup, partition backup, disk backup, etc. to various locations, such as external hard drives and network drives.

Download this tool on your computer and learn how to encrypt files with a password while backing up files to OneDrive:

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Backupper. Click Backup on the left menu and select File Backup.

Step 2. Click Add Folder or Add File to select the items you’d like to back up to OneDrive.

Step 3. Tap on the triangle icon of the destination bar and choose the Select a cloud drive option to select OneDrive.

Step 4. Click Options and go to the General tab. Toggle the switch next to Enable encryption for backups to turn it on. Then type and confirm your password.

Step 5. Click Start Backup to backup files to OneDrive encrypted.

How to Get More OneDrive Storage Without Payment

As an easy and powerful cloud backup service, CBackup not only allows you to back up and sync files to OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive, but provides you with its own CBackup Cloud backup space, with 5GB of free space.

If you have multiple Dropbox accounts, it is capable of combining all your OneDrive accounts, merging OneDrive and Dropbox, as well as merging OneDrive and Google Drive to expand your cloud storage for free. If you are interested in how to get more OneDrive free storage using CBackup, you can do as follows:

Step 1. Please download and install CBackup. Create a free account of CBackup and log in to CBackup desktop app.

Step 2. Click Storage, choose OneDrive, and hit Authorize Now to grant the cloud access to CBackup. Then, tap + Add Cloud and repeat the step to add all your target clouds to CBackup.

Step 3. Then, select + Add Combined Cloud and tick all clouds you want to combine. And click on Next.

Step 4. Tap on the triangle icon to determine the order of clouds used to store backup files and press Combine.

Now, the cloud combination process is finished and you will get a huge combined cloud on the storage list. You could click Backup and then Backup PC to Combined Cloud to save files to this huge OneDrive space easily.

Final Thoughts

How to create Personal Vault in OneDrive is quite simple with the guide above. Since the files in Personal Vault will count against your OneDrive storage, we also introduce an easy method that can help you get OneDrive 100GB free storage or more by combing cloud accounts with the help of CBackup. Hope this guide can be helpful to you!