How to back up your photos on Windows 10

By Cale Hunt
published

How do I use OneDrive to back up my photos on Windows 10?

There's no doubt about it; your photos are precious. To keep them safe, your best bet is to back them up to either a cloud storage service or an external hard drive. Here's how to back up your photos on Windows 10.

How to back up your photos with OneDrive

The easiest way to back up your photos on Windows 10 is to use OneDrive. You can sync certain folders on your PC to back up to OneDrive automatically, so you won't have to worry about losing your photos. Here's how to set up and sync using OneDrive whether you're just starting out or you're already an established user.

If you need more OneDrive space than the introductory 5GB, a variety of plans are available and come bundled with Office 365.

If you're using OneDrive for the first time on your PC

Haven't yet opened the OneDrive app on your PC? No worries; setup takes less than a minute, and at the end, your photos will be synced.

  1. Click the Start button.
  2. Click OneDrive — you might have to scroll down a bit to find it.

  1. Type your email address.
  2. Click Sign in.

  1. Type your password.
  2. Click Sign in.

  1. Click Next.
  2. Click the checkbox next to any folders you want to sync with OneDrive. Make sure you check the box next to the folder holding your photos.

  1. Click Next.
  2. Click Open my OneDrive folder.

If you've already set up OneDrive on your PC

Have you already set up OneDrive on your PC but don't have it set to sync your photos? No problem; here's how to change which folders sync to OneDrive.

  1. Launch File Explorer from your Start menu, taskbar, or desktop.
  2. Right-click OneDrive from the left-side menu.
  3. Click Choose OneDrive folder to sync.

  1. Click the checkbox next to any folders you want to sync. Make sure you check the box next to the folder holding your photos.
  2. Click OK.

Any photos in the folder you chose can now be found on OneDrive.

How to transfer individual photos to OneDrive

Not wanting to sync entire folders to OneDrive is understandable — sometimes you just want to safeguard a few photos in your collection. The easiest way to sync individual photos, and indeed any file, is to drag and drop it on the OneDrive folder.

  1. Launch File Explorer from your Start menu, taskbar, or desktop.
  2. Click the dropdown arrow next to OneDrive so that you can see the folder you want to transfer photos to. You can also transfer photos straight to OneDrive and organize them later.

  1. Navigate to the picture you want to back up to OneDrive.
  2. Click the picture and drag it to the OneDrive folder or the subfolder of choice.

That's it! If you want to get fancy, use the Ctrl + Click shortcut to select multiple files before dragging them over to OneDrive.

How to back up your photos to an external hard drive

Those of you who'd rather have a harder copy of your photos might want to back them up to an external hard drive. Windows 10 makes this as easy as possible.

If you don't yet have an external hard drive, we've made choosing one easy — just check out our best external hard drive buyer's guide.

How to set up an automatic backup to an external hard drive

Before starting these steps, make sure you plug an external hard drive into your PC.

  1. Click the Start button.
  2. Click the Settings button — it looks like a gear.

  1. Click Update & security.
  2. Click Backup.

  1. Click Add a drive.
  2. Click a drive.

  1. Click More options. Here you will see all subfolders in your user folder are backed up by default.
  2. Click any folder in the Back up these folders list that you don't want backed up.

  1. Click Remove. Continue removing folders until you have only the photos and files you want backed up remaining.
  2. Click Back up now to back up your photos immediately. You might have to scroll up a bit to find the button.

How to change the frequency of automatic backups

By default, your files will be backed up every hour as long as the external hard drive is plugged into your PC. Here's how to change how often files are synced.

  1. Click the Start button.
  2. Click the Settings button — it looks like a gear.
  3. Click Update & security.

  1. Click Backup.
  2. Click More options.

  1. Click the dropdown arrow beneath Back up my files.
  2. Click a backup option.

How to manually transfer photos to your external hard drive

If you don't want to set up an automatic backup — almost useless unless you always have an external hard drive plugged in — you can always move files manually. Before starting, make sure you have your external hard drive plugged into your PC.

  1. Launch File Explorer from your Start menu, taskbar, or desktop.
  2. Click the dropdown arrow next to your external drive so that you can see the folder you want to transfer photos to. You can also just transfer photos straight to your drive and worry about organization later.

  1. Navigate to the picture you want to back up to your external hard drive.
  2. Click the picture and drag it to the drive or the subfolder of choice.

If you want to transfer multiple files, use the Ctrl + Click shortcut to select multiple files before dragging them over to your external drive.

How do you back up your photos?

Do you use an external hard drive or do you use OneDrive? Let us know in the comments section!

Cale Hunt
Cale Hunt
Senior Editor, Laptop Reviews

Cale Hunt is formerly a Senior Editor at Windows Central. He focuses mainly on laptop reviews, news, and accessory coverage. He's been reviewing laptops and accessories full-time since 2016, with hundreds of reviews published for Windows Central. He is an avid PC gamer and multi-platform user, and spends most of his time either tinkering with or writing about tech.

18 Comments
  • Any way to backup all folders on windows mobile. Eg WhatsApp folder etc...
  • Cale, you should have also mentioned the new and really easy to use UWP OneDrive app that we have been using on our phones for so long. It's a great app with support for PIN and Windows Hello security.
    .
    Also a question. Once we've transferred the photos to the OneDrive folder to be uploaded, does it "link" the photos in some way? If we then delete the local files (on PC), will it still remain in the cloud? The UWP app keeps the photos. I've never used the desktop placeholder one, so am a bit confused.
    .
    Thanks. :)
  • If they are synced to your pc and you delete it locally it will delete it from onedrive as well. I dont think placeholders are back yet... But when they do come back they will be small files until you need it and then it will be the actual file so it takes up less space :). 
  • Hey - stop a minut. Onedrive os not really a backup solution, more like a synced copy. I use Crashplan as an online backup option. The difference between Chrashplan and Onedrive is that you got versioning in a real backup solution. If you use OneDrive and delete a file locally on your PC, then that syncs up to the cloud and that file gets deleted there to. Yes there is a trashcan in Onedrive but that will not keep deleted files for long. I would not trust Onedrive as a real backup source.
  • Are you sure this happens??!!!! Because that's exactly my doubt. And I've never heard of CrashPlan before. It's just really the best to do a manual backup in an Ext HDD
  • Actually, there is versioning in OneDrive also. Right-Click on a file in the browser in OneDrive and you will see the versioning option. But you are right that OneDrive should not be used as a backup of your important files. If for some reason, for example a bug is introduced by Microsoft in OneDrive and it deletes all your files (worst case scenario), they will be deleted on you pc also and there is probably no way of getting them back. I use OneDrive as my main location for all my data. Some folders that I used most are being sync'ed to my laptop as described above. For the other files I use the OneDrive of photos app, etc. But as a backup solution, I installed a Synology NAS and with the Cloud Sync function, all files are sync'ed between OneDrive and the NAS, and on the NAS filehistory is activated.
  • Yes, a backup solution locally is best imo when using onedrive (then you have a local copy and an online copy). However, it needs to have a buffer because if a crypto virus gets into your onedrive folders it could wipe everything out. And if that same crypto gets on your nas it can wipe that out too. So having a somewhat seperated backup solution might be better just incase something like that happens. 
  • So here's one that I do on my computers - you can actually go to the Properties window for "My Documents", "Pictures", "Music", etc, and change the location (folder path) to the documents, pictures, or music folders that you have synchronizing from onedrive. Suddenly, any app that saves something to those locations is now automatically syncing its files to OneDrive, instead of saving to a documents folder that just on your computer. Since I have multiple laptops/tablets, I created a separate documents folder in OneDrive for each computer, and I love it. It makes it easy to go find things that I have on the other laptops without having everything in one jumbled mess of a documents folder.
  • Same here. Changed locations of Documents, Pictures & Videos to OneDrive and I also have an external drive that I occasionally connect to have an incremental backup.
  • Great idea. I stopped using the default document folders ages ago for this reason, but this give them a purpose again. This should probably be the default for these legacy folders instead of having a separate onedrive branch.
  • Still wish you could do one way syncing. I just went to automatically send photos to OneDrive. I dont want to bring them all over to my pc while doing so.
  • This would be great.
  • Dropbox for me!
  • I use adobe photo shop elements and back up from there to an external hard drive and I manually copy pictures to a 128gb thumb drive for added security.
  • I just want to turn off albums/collections in the photo's app...
  • Back in the days, we took photos with an analog camera, kept the negatives in the bank vault and then called it a day :)
  • The good old days. So little problems to deal with. =P
  • Best way to sync photos is Google photos. For PC you get a Google Photos uploader. There is no upload limit. Only being that it will compress all larger images to a 16MP image. You can pick any folder on your PC and it also lets you change the upload plan if you have bought Google drive space. On top of these uploaded pictures, Google photos does great machine learning features and revisiting these pictures is a charm on Google Photos.