“I know I should back up, but what’s the actual minimum?” is the most common computer question that never gets answered. Every guide on this site has told you to back up. None of them told you how. This one does: one external drive, one cloud copy, and a ten-minute restore test - with tools that are already on your Windows PC.
Three Copies
Forget the complicated schemes. The minimum that actually works is three copies of what you care about:
- Copy one: the PC itself. That is the copy you are using right now. It counts - and it is the copy you cannot lose without losing everything, which is exactly why it cannot be the only one.
- Copy two: an external drive. A USB drive you own, plugged in when it is time to back up. Your local safety net: the PC dies or gets stolen, and the files are still on the drive in the drawer.
- Copy three: the cloud. OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud - a copy stored on someone else’s servers. This is the off-site copy. It survives the things the other two do not: fire, flood, theft, and the whole house going away.
That is the simplified 3-2-1, and it is easier than it sounds: three copies, two different kinds of storage, one off-site. The “two different media” part matters because a hard drive and a cloud account fail differently. A dead drive is common. A dead drive plus a dead cloud account on the same day is a plot twist, not a risk.
The honest math: this costs one hour, once, and then it runs itself. A 1TB external drive runs about $50. The setup is below, step by step.
What Do You Actually Need to Back Up?
You do not need to back up your computer. You can recreate that easily.You need to back up the stuff that only exists in one place.
The actual list:
- Documents. Letters, tax files, contracts, the novel you have been writing since 2019.
- Photos and videos. Ten years of family photos cannot be reinstalled.
- Passwords. The single most painful thing to lose, because losing them means losing every account behind them. If you reuse passwords, this matters double - the One Breach Away story showed how one stolen password opens accounts everywhere.
- Browser data. Bookmarks and saved logins, if you are not using a password manager yet.
The skip list, stated plainly: Windows itself, your apps, and your games. They are all reinstallable. If the PC dies, an afternoon of reinstalling puts Windows and your programs back. Nothing puts ten years of photos back. The people who lose everything are almost never the ones who forgot to back up Windows - they are the ones who thought “back up the computer” meant the whole disk and gave up because that sounded like work.
The Tools You Already Have
Windows ships with three backup tools. None of them are new, none cost money, and together they cover the whole minimum routine.
File History
File History is Windows’ built-in file backup, and it has been there since Windows 8. Search for “File History” in the Start menu. It backs up your files to an external drive, and it keeps versions - by default it saves a copy every hour, so if you save over the wrong file on Tuesday, you can reach back and pull Monday’s version. That version history is also your ransomware answer: when malware encrypts your files, File History can roll you back to before the encryption started.
Quick caveat: File History backs up the folders you choose (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, and the rest), not the whole drive. That is a feature, not a shortcoming - you need the files, not an image of the disk. And it only runs when the drive is plugged in, which is exactly how you want it: a drive that is disconnected cannot be encrypted by ransomware and cannot die with the PC.
OneDrive Folder Backup
OneDrive is the cloud copy, and it is already on your Windows PC. The folder backup feature (OneDrive settings, then Backup, then Manage backup) syncs your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to Microsoft’s servers. Close the laptop, and the files exist somewhere else on the planet.
The caveat is that the free OneDrive tier is 5GB, and photos will eat that in a weekend. OneDrive’s paid plans start at 1TB and come bundled with Microsoft 365. If you already pay for that, turn the folder backup on and the off-site copy is done. If you prefer Google Drive or iCloud, they work the same way and may not make you pay for things you don’t need.
The Recovery Drive
The recovery drive is the tool people confuse with a backup. It is not a backup of your files. It is a USB stick that can start your PC when Windows will not - which is exactly when you will need your files. Search for “recovery drive” in the Start menu, plug in an 8GB or larger USB stick, and let it build. Do it once, label it, and keep it with the external drive.
Why it belongs in the minimum: the other two tools protect your files. This one protects your ability to get back to them. When the PC will not boot, you do not want to be discovering that the recovery drive was never made.
The First Backup, Step by Step
One hour, once:
- Plug in the external drive.
- Turn on File History and point it at the drive. It starts copying immediately, then keeps going in the background.
- Turn on OneDrive folder backup for Desktop, Documents, and Pictures.
- Make the recovery drive while the first backup runs. It takes a few minutes and a USB stick.
- When the first run finishes, unplug the drive and put it somewhere safe. A drawer is fine. Unplugged means not encryptable and not lost with the PC.
That is the whole setup. The only maintenance from here: plug the drive in once a week or so and let File History run for a few minutes. That is the “one hour a year” part, and it is genuinely that small.
The Ten-Minute Restore Test
A backup you have never tested is a hope, not a backup. Drives fail quietly. Cloud accounts get locked. The test costs ten minutes, and it is the only way to find out before it matters.
Test one: the external drive. Open File History, choose “Restore personal files,” pick any file, and restore it to a test folder instead of its original spot. Open the restored file. It works? That is the whole test.
Test two: the cloud. Open onedrive.com (or whatever service you chose instead) in a browser, or sign in on your phone, find a file, download it, open it. If you can pull a file down from somewhere else, the off-site copy is real.
Do both in the same week you set the backup up, then again every few months. Restoring one file takes five minutes and keeps the habit alive. If a test ever fails, you found out cheap - the drive failed on a Tuesday afternoon instead of the day before your laptop did.
The Ten-Minute Quick Start (If You Have Never Backed Up)
If you have never backed up, do not start with the full setup. Do these three things, in this order, today:
- Passwords. Export them from your browser’s saved-passwords list, or start a password manager this week. I use Proton Pass which is free, but so is BitWarden, which is just as good.Keep the exported file on the external drive, not on the desktop. Losing your passwords is worse than losing the files.
- Documents and photos. Plug in any USB drive you own and copy your Documents and Pictures folders onto it. Drag and drop is fine for today.
- Cloud. Turn on OneDrive folder backup for those two folders. Five gigabytes will hold your documents and a solid chunk of photos.
Ten minutes, three actions, and the “I know I should” guilt is gone. You now have a working minimum - and when you have a spare hour, the step-by-step above upgrades it to the full three-copy setup.
The Part Not to Skip
The backup is not done when the copy finishes. It is done when you have restored a file and watched it open. That ten-minute test is the difference between “I have a backup” and “I have a backup that works” - and you will never know which one you have until the day it matters.
So here is the deal: set up the three copies, run the restore test this week, and the next time Windows asks you to update - or 25H2 arrives on its own - the routine that tells you to back up first becomes a two-minute chore instead of a guilt trip.
The PC Basics section promised safe updates, backups, and the settings worth changing. Safe updates and settings are covered. That was the last one.