Back Up Windows to an External / USB Drive — Encrypted, Scheduled
Schedule encrypted backups to an external USB or portable drive. AES-256 so a lost drive stays private, versioned history, and automatic runs whenever the drive is connected.
An external USB drive is the simplest backup there is — and still one of the most useful. It's fast, it's cheap per terabyte, and a copy that's physically disconnected most of the time is immune to ransomware that spreads over the network. BackupKit treats an external drive like any local destination: pick the drive, set a schedule, encrypt, done.
Why a local drive still earns its place
- Fast restores. USB 3 / USB-C means a full restore happens at hundreds of MB/s, not at the mercy of your internet upload speed.
- Cheap capacity. Multi-terabyte portable drives cost less than a year of equivalent cloud storage.
- Air-gapped when unplugged. A drive that's only connected during backups can't be reached by malware the rest of the time.
A portable drive is exactly the thing that goes missing in a bag or a move. BackupKit's AES-256 client-side encryption means a lost or stolen external drive is just unreadable bytes to whoever finds it. The password stays with you.
Set it up
- Plug in the drive and note its letter (e.g.
E:\). - Create a backup job: source = the folders you want protected; destination = a folder on the external drive.
- Configure AES-256 encryption, a schedule, retention (keep N days or N versions), and compression.
- Choose a missed-run policy so that if the drive wasn't connected at the scheduled time, BackupKit runs the job as soon as you plug it back in.
- Activate.
Common questions
Set the missed-run policy to “run immediately,” and BackupKit catches up the next time the drive is connected, so you don't silently skip backups.
It's the local leg. For 3-2-1, add an off-site copy — a cloud drive, FTP server, or remote NAS — as a second BackupKit job, so one fire or theft can't take everything.
Related
Coming August 2026
Back up anything to anywhere — encrypted, scheduled, automated. Join the waitlist and be first to know when BackupKit is ready — early subscribers get 20% off at launch.