Backing up an existing folder to OneDrive/Dropbox/Google Drive (Windows Vista/7/8/8.1)

colonel_mortis · August 22, 2014

I have made and tested this tutorial using OneDrive (SkyDrive), but in theory it should work with Dropbox and Google Drive, as well as any other sync software that mounts its own folder on your computer.

There are a few tutorials on the web that tell you how to back up a folder to OneDrive, but most of them only work for Win8 and below or for Win8.1 and up. This version works for both, and I have tested it on Windows 7 and 8.1.
This will not duplicate the files on your hard drive, unlike some methods (which involve syncing the source and OneDrive folder to make sure that they're up to date).

Why would you want to do this?
Personally, because I have an Office365 subscription, I have just over 1TB of OneDrive space (which happens to be more than the 750GB in my computer), and since I don't use cloud storage much, I thought that I might as well back up my "My Documents" folder to OneDrive. My brother is using it to back up his school documents to OneDrive without needing to relocate all his existing files, and make it easier to save stuff.

How do you do it?

Open Command Prompt (you don't need to run it as administrator)
Type mklink /J (ends in a space) into the command prompt, but don't press enter
Open Windows Explorer and Shift+Right Click on OneDrive (or the folder that will have a new folder created within where the files will be synced to) (This is typically found in your User Profile, which can be reached by typing %userprofile% into Windows Explorer's address bar), and click Copy As Path
Right Click in the command prompt and click Paste (you can't use Ctrl+V). The path to OneDrive should be pasted into the command prompt, enclosed in "double quotes".
Press ← (Left arrow key) once, so the end quote is highlighted, then type \ followed by the name of the folder that you want to create, which the sync will populate.
In Windows Explorer, copy the path of the source folder (Shift+Right Click, Copy as Path) and paste it into command prompt, leaving a space between the two paths.
Your command prompt line should now look something like this:
```
mklink /J "C:\Users\Me\SkyDrive\My Synced Folder" "C:\Users\Me\Documents"
```
If so, press enter. After a couple of seconds, it should report a success, then OneDrive will start syncing your data.

Note: On Windows 8.1, OneDrive crashed after completing the sync. This may be a coincidence (it's an old PC with a failing hard drive), but it may mean that this can cause issues with OneDrive. Please let me know whether it works for you, and what OS you're using.