How to protect your OneDrive files in a Personal Vault?

OneDrive Personal Vault brings added security to your most important or sensitive files, photos and videos with a strong authentication method. The feature is rolling out worldwide and will be available to everyone with a Microsoft account by the end of 2019.

Continue reading to know what is OneDrive Personal Vault and how to enable or disable the Personal Vault in your OneDrive storage.

What is OneDrive Personal Vault?

The OneDrive Personal Vault is a protected area within your OneDrive space that provides you an additional layer of protection for your most important files, photos and videos. The protected space can be accessed with a strong 2-Factor authentication.

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If you are free user, it limits you to store a maximum of three files, but for the users having a paid subscription can store unlimited files.

How to activate the OneDrive Personal Vault?

To set up the Personal Vault in your OneDrive storage, first login to your OneDrive account. After login, you will find a Personal Vault icon along with the other folders, as shown in the following screenshot. Click on the icon to continue next.

The following popup will open, asking you to secure your Personal Vault with an extra layer of security so that you can store your most important and sensitive files, photos and videos. Click the Next button to proceed with adding a two-factor authentication.

The next popup will show account details on the screen. You will need to verify your account. Click the Verify button to proceed next. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the verification process. If you don't have 2FA enabled to your account, you will have to set it up.

After successful account verification, the following screen will be shown to your screen where you add new files or move your existing files to the secure vault.

Please note that, by default the Personal Vault will lock down automatically after 20 minutes of inactivity. You can also lock it manually by clicking the Personal Vault settings icon and select Lock.

How to deactivate the OneDrive Personal Vault?

In case you want to deactivate/disable the OneDrive Personal Vault in your account, follow the steps mentioned below:

1. Login to your OneDrive account.
2. Click on the settings gear icon and navigate to Options | Personal Vault.
3. Now click the Disable link set next to the Disable Personal Vault label.
4. It will double confirm you whether you really want to disable the Personal Vault. Click the Disable button to deactivate it.

A point to note that, disabling/deactivating the Personal Vault will delete all files and folders that you kept inside it. Before disabling it, make sure that you have taken a backup of the files and folders. Once deleted, there will be no option to restore/recover those. All other files and folders in your OneDrive account will remain intact.