Reddit AMA

r/DataHoarder: Backing up OneDrive straight to other cloud provider

Paul Schiffer

Oct 16, 2022 • 1 min read

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This article archives a conversation, which took place in a subreddit post (original source linked below) and to which I contributed a solution or answer (with the u/MasterofSynapse handle), in a Q&A format.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/w5zyla/backing_up_onedrive_straight_to_other_cloud/

Question

I'm attempting to setup a backup routine with something like Duplicacy or Kopia from cloud-based storage (OneDrive) to other cloud-based storage (Backblaze B2 / Glacier / etc). I'm attempting this for a simple 1-2 cloud approach, attempting to get rid of a NAS.

My goal was to have a Windows VM, all users logged into it, then have an account read from each users OneDrive account and back them to the other service provider, though this doesn't seem to work out well, as OneDrive tries to download everything and the backups end up erroring out. I'm attempting to use a Windows VM due to automatic phone backups to Photos, which seems to only populate in Windows, as opposed to an rclone mount.

Has anyone done this or have any suggestions for something like this? I would prefer to maintain OneDrive as the base as I have already subscribed to the yearly plan due to Office.

Answer

OneDrive usage and the backup operation can be kept separately. Just use OneDrive as you normally would and then, on a separate instance, use rclone sync to backup OneDrive to another provider. You can even automate it by having a script per user that runs at a specified time.