Using MS OneDrive Personal Vault as a backup destination?

[Clariman]

MS OneDrive's Personal Vault is a folder which can only be accessed by 2-factor authentication and whose contents is encrypted. If it is not accessed for 20 minutes the vault will be locked closed again.

I would like to use it as a destination for a scheduled and automated backup (using Macrium Reflect). However, I am wondering what will happen when the backup software tries to access the Personal Vault. Will it fail or will I get an authentication request to my phone (which is what happens when I try to access the folder on my PC)? Assuming the latter, how long will Macrium Reflect wait until it can access the vault as a backup destination?

Thanks
C

[Midsmartin]

Try it and see! From a quick Google, I think you're right. It will want to authenticate. Why not just back up to a folder on normal OneDrive? Turn on encryption in macrium if that
Is your worry.

Remember that uploading a backup could saturate your broadband upload link for quite a long time if it's a big backup.. Ie a full backup, or a differential after Lloyd of changes. (my initial cloud backup upload took three weeks.. Updates take minutes though).

[Clariman]

I have opened up a ticket with Microsoft to discuss this. I think it is going to be a non-starter but will update further when I get to the bottom of it.

C

[mc2fool]

I have opened up a ticket with Microsoft to discuss this. I think it is going to be a non-starter but will update further when I get to the bottom of it.

Umm... Wouldn't it be quicker & easier to just try it?!?

In any case, what is it you're actually wanting to achieve? And doesn't 2FA defeat the idea of automated backups anyway, as 2FA requires manual intervention, e.g. entering a code sent to you by SMS or similar.

And to pick up the point by Midsmartin, at the upload speed you reported of 5.8 Mb/s, it'll take at least 25 minutes to upload 1GB, which means your full backups (of your 183GB currently being used) will take at the very minimum 47 hours -- and that's assuming Macrium compression to 2/3rds and that everything between you and the OneDrive servers is flying along optimally.

[Clariman]

I have opened up a ticket with Microsoft to discuss this. I think it is going to be a non-starter but will update further when I get to the bottom of it.

Umm... Wouldn't it be quicker & easier to just try it?!?

Yes it would, but I want to make sure I properly understand the Personal Vault feature. It turns out it does no synchronise like the other OneDrive folders do, if I understand MS correctly. I'm also double-checking its architecture. Normal OneDrive folders are on the local hard drive but get uploaded and sync'd to the cloud. As far as I can tell, the Personal Vault might be cloud only.... so I want to understand that before I go any further.

In any case, what is it you're actually wanting to achieve?

A secure non-local backup of important folders from my PC.

And doesn't 2FA defeat the idea of automated backups anyway, as 2FA requires manual intervention, e.g. entering a code sent to you by SMS or similar.

Yes that's my point unless there is a smart way of handling this.

And to pick up the point by Midsmartin, at the upload speed you reported of 5.8 Mb/s, it'll take at least 25 minutes to upload 1GB, which means your full backups (of your 183GB currently being used) will take at the very minimum 47 hours -- and that's assuming Macrium compression to 2/3rds and that everything between you and the OneDrive servers is flying along optimally.

I understand and that is one of the reasons I think this is a non-starter.

Assuming that Macrium Reflect continues to work well after my initial teething problems, I think the medium term solution is to upgrade to the paid version and do Folder/File backups to standard OneDrive folders using encryption.

[mc2fool]

In any case, what is it you're actually wanting to achieve?

A secure non-local backup of important folders from my PC.

And to pick up the point by Midsmartin, at the upload speed you reported of 5.8 Mb/s, it'll take at least 25 minutes to upload 1GB, which means your full backups (of your 183GB currently being used) will take at the very minimum 47 hours -- and that's assuming Macrium compression to 2/3rds and that everything between you and the OneDrive servers is flying along optimally.

I understand and that is one of the reasons I think this is a non-starter.

Assuming that Macrium Reflect continues to work well after my initial teething problems, I think the medium term solution is to upgrade to the paid version and do Folder/File backups to standard OneDrive folders using encryption.

Well, that may be smaller than the full 183GB but it will still suffer the same upload speed problem. You seem to be looking for convoluted ways of doing things that there are already potentially easy solutions to!

If you quite simply put your personal folders into OneDrive you will automatically get non-local copies of them, as they are synced up to the cloud. The initial sync will take yonks but after that you probably won't even notice it syncing when you change any files. That, of course, is 'cos it'll only re-sync files that have changed, whereas with your solution above it will have to upload effectively the whole lot each time you do a full backup and it gets uploaded.

Now, as for secure (i.e. encrypted) non-local copies, have you got round to doing, as previously suggested, a split of things that actually need to be encrypted and those that don't? Bank account spreadsheets vs photos of the family dog?

You said before that the former was "probably not a huge amount", and if that comes to less than 5GB you can just simply put your secure personal folders into Sync.com, for free, and that's it, no other faffing necessary!

[Clariman]

If you quite simply put your personal folders into OneDrive you will automatically get non-local copies of them, as they are synced up to the cloud. The initial sync will take yonks but after that you probably won't even notice it syncing when you change any files. That, of course, is 'cos it'll only re-sync files that have changed, whereas with your solution above it will have to upload effectively the whole lot each time you do a full backup and it gets uploaded.

Fair point

Now, as for secure (i.e. encrypted) non-local copies, have you got round to doing, as previously suggested, a split of things that actually need to be encrypted and those that don't? Bank account spreadsheets vs photos of the family dog?

I have considered it but it will be quite a lot of work to check what is confidential/personal and what is not. Having avoided Cloud based services it is not something I have had to consider when doing local backups. Sure you could argue that I should have considered these things for local backups but I haven't. I had hoped that backing up all my data folders to the Personal Vault would be both simple and secure. I now need to reconsider.

You said before that the former was "probably not a huge amount", and if that comes to less than 5GB you can just simply put your secure personal folders into Sync.com, for free, and that's it, no other faffing necessary!

Because I have not gone through the whole exercise of working out what is personal/confidential I don't know what the size is.

Given that I have 1TB of OneDrive included in my MS 365 subscription and it takes data offsite, it should form the basis of my offsite backups. However, I need to decide whether to simply trust it for all my data without worrying too much about confidentiality or I need to spend time working out what data is confidential and what data is not and then rejigging the structure of data on my local drive and/or OneDrive.

Thanks
C

[Mike4]

Just a quick point, while you are spending all this time designing your gold-plated automated back-up strategy which looks like it might still take a while yet, do you have a rough-and-ready base-metal strategy in place?

'Y'know, in the unlikely event that you, say, drop your laptop again?

[Midsmartin]

If you want backup to cloud, I think it's best to use a product that's designed for that. Macrium will want to create a new full backup once in a while unless you choose "incrementals forever", and this will take another 40+ hours to upload. "Incrementals forever", I think, may modify files as it combines old backups together (I might be wrong) and Onedrive might therefore keep finding fmore to upload than you expect. You could try it out and see!

I mentioned Duplicati earlier - a free backup tool that will backup directly to Onedrive, though it's not perfect. Some report slowness and troubles with large backups, but I find it works well for me. I use it to backup a small amount to Google drive as a test, and a larger local backup.

It might be simpler just to store your files in Onedrive, call that your cloud backup, and since you have Macrium, use that as your extra belt and braces for a local backup.

I also use Crashplan for cloud backups which I find excellent. Its more expensive though as they stopped the cheap/free options some while ago, and is $10/month, aimed at small(ish) businesses.

I think Onedrive is perfectly secure if you have a good, strong password for it that you don't use for anything else, and best if you have 2 factor authentication on (plenty of businesses use it). And have a strategy in place to regain access if you cant' use MFA because you lost your phone - eg make sure you have alternate email addresses and phone numbers on your account. From my reading about Duplicati, it "should* work even if MFA is enabled on Onedrive but I haven't tried it myself.

[mc2fool]

Macrium will want to create a new full backup once in a while unless you choose "incrementals forever", and this will take another 40+ hours to upload. "Incrementals forever", I think, may modify files as it combines old backups together (I might be wrong) and Onedrive might therefore keep finding fmore to upload than you expect.

According to this Macrium knowledge base article if you have Incrementals Forever with Synthetic Full backups, which is where it merges the oldest incremental into the full backup, then, once the system is up and going, the full backup and all incrementals are written to every time a new incremental is created, and that's obviously a non-starter with OneDrive as it'd trigger more than a full backups worth of upload each time.

If you have Incrementals Forever with Incremental Merge, which is where it merges the oldest incremental into the second oldest, then just all incrementals are written to every time a new incremental is created, which, while clearly better, is likely to still cause a lot of uploading, and increasingly so over time as the oldest incremental accumulates more and more changes.