How to Do Free Offsite Backup on Windows 11/10/8/7: 2 Ways

What Is Offsite Backup?

Offsite backup is a crucial component of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan according to the 3-2-1 backup principle. It involves creating and storing copies of important data in a location separate from the primary site or the original data source. Several free offsite backup solutions are available, including external devices like USB flash drives, HDDs, SSDs, and tapes, cloud drives, network drives, and even another PC.

Offsite backup solutions empower individuals and businesses to securely copy files, folders, operational data, or entire operating systems to offsite backup storage. Such backup services often include disaster recovery capabilities, enabling swift and effortless data retrieval. In the following discussion, we will explore the key advantages of implementing offsite backup and guide you through the process of performing free offsite backup on Windows PCs with ease.

Benefits of Creating Offsite Backup

The decision to opt for offsite backup solutions is driven by the desire to safeguard data in the face of regional natural or human-made disasters. The advantages of offsite backup include:

• Protect data in the event of a disaster like a fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, etc.
• Protection from cyber-attacks.
• Easy data access from anywhere.
• Simple to scale storage space on the cloud.

How to Do Free Offsite Backup: Easy Offsite Backup Solutions

Doing an offsite backup is indeed a straightforward process, and there are both automatic and manual methods available. In this section, we will introduce free offsite backup software along with a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Way 1. Perform Offsite Backup using Backup and Restore

Backup and Restore is a built-in backup and recovery utility in Windows operating systems. With this tool, you can create backups of individual files and folders, as well as system image backups. It provides the flexibility to perform free offsite backups to various storage options such as DVDs, USB drives, and network locations.

To utilize Backup and Restore for creating offsite file backups, follow the steps below:

Step 1. Open the Control Panel on your Windows computer. Under the System and Security section, click on Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

Step 2. In the Backup and Restore window, you will see the Back up or restore your files section. Click on Set up backup to proceed.

Step 3. Choose an offsite backup destination by selecting an external hard drive or backing up to network drive by hitting Save on a network and following the prompts to select the desired network location.

Step 4. Select Let Windows choose (recommended) or Let me choose to pick what you wish to back up.

Step 5. Review the backup settings and click on Save settings and run backup to initiate the offsite backup process.

Way 2. Create Free Offsite Backup with AOMEI Backupper Standard

AOMEI Backupper Standard is a comprehensive software that offers a wide range of features to facilitate free offsite backups and restores. With this software, you can perform various types of backups, including file backups, system backups, disk backups, and partition backups. The following features contribute to implementing offsite backup best practices:

Backup files regularly: It allows you to auto backup files at a fixed frequency such as daily, weekly, monthly, event triggers, and USB plug in.

Various backup destinations: In addition to offsite backup path supported on Backup and Restore (USB and network drive), this software allows you to backup files to external hard drive, NAS, and cloud drives, including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, SugarSync, hubiC and Cloudme.

Versatile backup methods: It provides you with three backup methods: Full, Incremental, and Differential. The last two allow you to only back up changed data to save storage space.  (First two options are free, and the last option is available in the Pro version)

To rely on this offsite backup software free to create offsite file backups, you can go on with the guideline below:

Step 1. Start by launching the AOMEI Backupper Standard software. On the main page, click on Backup and then select File Backup.

Note:✎...

If you have an AOMEI account, you have the option to choose Cloud Backup. This allows you to backup files to AOMEI Cloud, which offers 1TB of free cloud storage for the first 15 days.

Step 2. Name the backup task if needed. Click on Add Folder or Add File to select the specific items on your computer that you want to include in the backup.

Step 3. In the second bar, click on the inverted triangle icon to expand the options and choose a destination path for your backup. You have the following three options: Select a local path, Add Share or NAS Devices, or Select a cloud drive.

Step 4. Verify your backup settings, and click on Start Backup to initiate the offsite backup process.

★To further explore the backup settings in AOMEI Backupper, you can utilize the following features:

Backup Options: It allows you to encrypt backup (in the Pro version), enable email notification, compress backup, split image backup, and so on.

Backup Schedule: It enables you to set up auto backups according to your needs.

Backup Scheme: You can choose the desired backup method and manage file backups by deleting old backups automatically.

Conclusion

This article introduces two methods for free offsite backup, but it's clear that AOMEI Backupper offers a more comprehensive and user-friendly solution. With AOMEI Backupper, you have a wider range of backup destinations and backup methods available to suit your specific needs. Whether you prefer to backup to external drives, network locations, or cloud storage, this backup software provides flexibility and convenience.

Don't wait until it's too late - take proactive measures to safeguard your data by utilizing the power of AOMEI Backupper for your offsite backup needs.