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I'm not sure there is a way to do what I want to do. Now that I have Office 360 + 1TB of free space, I'd like to set my mac to do monthly backups to OneDrive. I'm looking for the following features.

  1. Sync + Upload
    • Sync: would be great if it just uploaded changed files
    • Direct Upload: rather than just dropping files into the OneDrive folder, so my local Hard Drive doesn't explode.
  2. Starts automatically, runs in the background

Is there any combination of software that can accomplish this? I've done a fair amount of googling and can't seem to find a solution. Basically looking for "Carbonite" but instead - using Microsoft OneDrive.

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  • Have you gotten anything working? I tried ExpanDrive but sadly it doesn't work with my Office 360 account and I can't manage to interest tech support for long enough for them to investigate.
    – Paul
    Jan 13, 2017 at 14:08
  • "Known Folder Move" aka Folder Redirection aka Desktop/Documents sync is coming to the OneDrive for macOS client sometime in 2022: techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/…
    – Josh Newman
    Feb 8 at 19:57

4 Answers 4

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IF the onedrive is mounted then you can use sync and cron with a script (Please note on kindle fire and format may be off so this will be simple):

cd $HOME
rsync -ar . /Volumes/<mount point of one drive>

This has more details:

Once you have saved script, and gave it execute permission, use crontab -e to add your frequency.

Please see this for crontab example (I can not give proper screen display with kindle)

If the drive is not visible with df, then I am not sure.

Following up on this answer, you could use this utility to mount your OneDrive folder and to the backup using the info above:

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    I think you may want to confirm that one drive supports all of the exact same file system meta data that your Mac expects to see when it comes time to restore. If it doesn't, you can still use this solution by backing up to a mounted sparse DMG file that lives on one drive.
    – webmarc
    Sep 25, 2014 at 11:07
  • I can't mount OneDrive because I want to make a clone of my entire hard drive. For this, I need an "upload" solution - not a mounted solution that would require more hard disk space. Does that make sense? What I need is an "upload to Microsoft OneDrive" sync solution.
    – timshutes
    Sep 25, 2014 at 13:08
  • OK, but are you including the OneDrive in your backup as well?
    – CousinCocaine
    Oct 5, 2014 at 14:39
  • Good question - In this instance, I wouldn't have OneDrive installed on my machine, or would exclude the "backup" folder from OneDrive and exclude OneDrive from the backup.
    – timshutes
    Oct 8, 2014 at 16:36
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You can take a look at python-onedrive. It takes a little work to setup but it works for the most part. I have used it with folder actions and launch agents to auto upload files when put in certain folders places within my mac.

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  • can you expand on this? How would I use this to backup and sync my whole machine?
    – timshutes
    Oct 8, 2014 at 16:36
  • I don't think it would work for the whole machine. I just tried to upload a 1 gig file and it failed. It did work using a bash for each loop with the ondrive-cli put command on my ~/User folder.
    – tron_jones
    Oct 8, 2014 at 17:36
  • In that case, this solution won't work. I can't believe there is no backup solution that can upload to OneDrive like it's a remote server.
    – timshutes
    Oct 8, 2014 at 18:21
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timshutes - mounting does NOT mean you use local space. ExpanDrive should work just fine for your application. You could probably even put a sparsebundle there and use TimeMachine to backup to it.

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I have been investigating a product called CloudBacko which does exactly that. It claims Windows, Mac, Exchange, and more backed up to Google Drive, OneDrive, S3, and many more, even aggregating multiple destinations. It seems to be based on a white-label backup product called Ashay. The Home version is free and claims to offer some support for versioning as well, but does not offer monthly backups according to the feature chart. The cheapest paid version (Lite) offers monthly for a one-time $19 which they say is a perpetual single license. I'm very curious but a bit gunshy until I see some reviews.

http://www.cloudbacko.com/en/cloudbacko-advanced-cloud-local-server-workstation-amazon-S3-google-backup-software-benefits.jsp

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    I don't see how this answers the OP's question about backing up to OneDrive, instead it seems to be more of a product promotion.
    – Allan
    Jul 18, 2016 at 20:59
  • He asked for a software product that would do this. I provided one, much more comprehensive than @tron_jones provided. I have no affiliation whatsover with CloudBacko; I stumbled across it today with the same Google search that led me to this question. As I mentioned, I decided against using it personally, because I prefer to use things that are well-demonstrated and I did not find evidence for that. No promotion intended; if you feel I give too much detail you're welcome to edit some out. Or if you feel my terminology like "seems" and "claims" and "they say" is too gushy. :-)
    – Paul
    Jul 18, 2016 at 21:08
  • As I recall SE policy specifically forbids posting links without elaboration as answers.
    – Paul
    Jul 18, 2016 at 21:09
  • Why the downvote?
    – Paul
    Jul 20, 2016 at 18:45
  • No idea...I didn't downvote it.
    – Allan
    Jul 20, 2016 at 18:47

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