In the McAfee Online Backup backup software for Windows, Local Backup lets you back up the same files to the McAfee Online Backup cloud and to a local drive.
You can back up to a local network drive using a UNC path only if you have a server pass for McAfee Online Backup.
Local Backup provides a second level of protection as well as convenience. Because your files are backed up locally, restoring is much faster then waiting for your files to download from the cloud.
Local backups happen at the same time at the same time a backup to the McAfee cloud happens. Exactly the same files are backed up both online and locally. You cannot select different files to back up online versus locally, and you cannot choose for local backups to happen at a different time than online backups.
If your online backup stops in the middle of a backup, your local backup continues. If the local backup drive is unavailable, your online backups continue as scheduled. The next time the local backup drive is available, your data is backed up to the local drive. If you replace a local backup drive with a new drive that does not contain any backup files, all of your files are backed up to the new drive, as long as it has the same drive letter. If a local backup occurs when an online backup cannot occur, such as if you have no internet connection, the status will show either Preparing data or Communicating with server until the local backup is complete.
You can enable local backup version history. This makes it possible to restore previous versions of files from your local backup. If you do not enable local backup version history, and if you change your file selections to stop backing up a file, or if you delete a file from your computer which had been backed up, those files and folders are no longer restorable from the local backup. However, because deselected or deleted files remain in the cloud during your grace period, you can still download them through the McAfee Online Backup backup software. You may also download them from McAfee Online Backup on the Web.
If you directly access and delete files on the local backup drive, those files can no longer be backed up locally; however, they are still backed up online. Therefore, you can download such files through the McAfee Online Backup backup software. You may also download them from McAfee Online Backup on the Web.
Just like online backups, you can see local backup events in your history. However, you can see only whether a local backup was successful; you cannot see details. Only final status information is provided for local backups, though during a local backup to a removable drive, you may see indications of drive activity.