Setting up a good backup system can seem time-consuming and intimidating, but it's neither. Anyone can do it, and everyone should. In less than 15 minutes you can have a system that backs up your files automatically—both to an external drive and to encrypted cloud storage—without any regular action from you.
It really depends upon what you are backing up. Small files shouldn't take more than a few minutes (or seconds), larger files (1GB for instance) may take 4 or 5 minutes or slightly longer. If you are backing up your whole drive you may be looking at hours for the backup.