Is it better to store on cloud or hard drive?

External hard drive is a common storage device, which has been widely used in daily life and works for many years. You may find that external hard drive cannot meet some of your needs as time passes by.

Nowadays, there is an increasing number of people who choose to transfer files to cloud storage. Is it better to store on cloud? Compared with external hard drive, cloud storage definitely has some powerful advantages.

• Much safer for data: Cloud storage will protect your important data away from local disasters, storage device damages, system crashes, and more.
• Easier access: If you save your data on cloud, you do not need to carry external hard drive everywhere to access data.
• Scalable storage space: Cloud storage supports to subscribe to different plans to expand your cloud storage space according to needs.

Thus, you might get interested in cloud storage and need to sync external hard drive to cloud in an easy way.

Sync external hard drive to cloud: 3 options for you

How to sync hard drive to the cloud? We will introduce you in detail. No matter what cloud drive you are using, you can refer to the 3 options here to sync external hard drive to OneDrive, Google Drive, or other cloud storage easily.

Option 1. Sync external hard drive data to cloud on web page

The basic method is to sync external hard drive to cloud by manual uploading. For instance, you can sync external hard drive to Google Drive on its official web page. Here is a simple guideline:

1. Connect your external hard drive to computer correctly. In your browser, navigate to the Google Drive website. Log into your Google account then.

2. Click on the My Drive tab, click on Upload files... or Upload folder.... Then, choose files or folders from your external hard drive in the next pop-up window.

In this way, you can sync external hard drive to cloud manually and selectively. But when you have lots of files and folders to sync, this method will cost much time and effort. Please refer to the following 2 options.

Option 2. Sync external hard drive to cloud with desktop client

As we know, almost each cloud storage provides an official desktop client. And after you set up it on your computer, you will get a folder or disk for it. You can use the desktop client or the folder to sync external hard drive to cloud as well. Here we take Google Drive’s desktop client - Drive for Desktop as an example.

1. Download and install the Drive for Desktop client on your computer, then open it and press Sign in with browser to sign into your account.

2. Then go to click on the Google Drive icon and click Settings > Preferences. Select My Computer > Add folder. Then you can choose folders from your external hard drive.

3. In this window, choose Sync with Google Drive, then click on Save.

Likewise, other cloud drive services also provide official desktop clients.

• To sync external hard drive to OneDrive, you can consider using the OneDrive desktop client. If you are using a Windows 10 or 11 computer, it will be re-installed on your computer.
• To sync external hard drive to Dropbox, you can also use the Dropbox desktop application to sync data to Dropbox.

Option 3. Sync external hard drive to cloud automatically

Is there a way can help you sync external hard drive to cloud manually or automatically? We highly recommend you a professional cloud service - CBackup. With CBackup, you can sync external hard drive to Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. directly.

In addition to supporting many mainstream cloud drives, CBackup has many other shining points:

You can choose any type of data like files, folders, videos, audios, programs, and even the entire hard drive to sync to cloud via CBackup.

There is no limitation on uploading speed and file size during the sync tasks.

In addition to external hard drives, you can sync data from local drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, or the whole computer to cloud.

How to sync external hard drive to cloud with CBackup automatically? You can refer to the easy steps:

1. Connect your external hard drive to computer. Download and install the CBackup desktop client. Sign up for an account and run it to log into your account.

2. Click on the Storage tab. We still take Google Drive as an example, select Google Drive > Authorize Now. But you can choose other cloud drives to add to CBackup as well.

3. Choose Sync > Sync PC to Public Cloud.

4. Choose your external hard drive data as the sync source. Then choose the cloud drive account you just added as the sync destination.

5. To make the sync task automatic, you can click on Settings on the left bottom. Just enable the Scheduler feature for free. There are 4 time modes that you can choose from. Next, click on Start Sync to sync external hard drive to cloud automatically.

Notes: In addition to sync, you can try some other features in CBackup for free.

Combine cloud storage: With this feature, you can get more cloud storage by merging many cloud drive accounts into a combined cloud.

Free cloud storage: CBackup offers 5GB of free cloud storage for each account. You can back up files to CBackup Cloud to take advantage of it.

Backup external hard drive for safety

If you want to save external hard drive data on cloud for safety, you’d better create backups of it because you can restore files to any backup version you created. CBackup can be a nice choice to create cloud backup for external drive. With the professional backup feature in CBackup, you can back up external hard drive to any cloud directly and keep unlimited backup versions. Here is an easy guide to do it:

1. After adding your cloud to CBackup, click on the Backup button and click Backup PC to Public Cloud.

2. Choose data on your external hard drive as backup source, and select any cloud drive account as the backup destination.

3. After the above, click the Start Backup button to backup your external hard drive to cloud quickly.

Written in the end

Now, you have known how to sync external hard drive to cloud manually or automatically. If you want to sync data to different clouds on one interface, you can try the professional cloud service CBackup for free. With it, you can sync data from external hard drive to cloud selectively or completely. Besides, you can use it to backup files to cloud for data security.