Understanding Windows 8’s File History

Topic

New Reply

	TOP STORY Understanding Windows 8’s File History
	By Fred Langa File History is a radical departure from all previous Windows backup systems. Here’s what you need to know about File History: why it’s so different, its requirements, its advanced settings — and some useful tweaks!

---

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/understanding-windows-8s-file-history (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

[/tr][/tbl]

Reply | Quote

Replies

I thought File History was a great system until recently. After using it on several PCs at work and at home I have encountered the odd problem in the past month where backups simply stopped working. File History showed that it was still on, but checking the available versions that I could restore from showed that backups ceased to be recorded over a month ago! The target drives had tons of extra space available so I was puzzled. I’ve tried changing the backup locations. I’ve tried wiping the old backup drives and starting from scratch. Nothing seems to work.

On one system where I wiped the drive, if I run File History manually it says it’s backing up for the first time for a few seconds and then says it shows the option to Run now. It says File History is on. Nothing gets saved if I look in the Restore personal files.

In my office I have a 4TB NAS with several TB free. I can’t delete old backups, nor can I save new backups. It tells me it’s saving backups, but nothing new has been saved since last month. I’m at a loss. I need my backups, but File History is catastrophically failing on multiple machines on multiple networks. If I hadn’t manually checked I’d never know about this problem as there are no warnings or errors displayed anywhere.

Reply | Quote

Mine stopped working also. It ran 13 times after I set it up, so I believed it was working properly. Haven’t checked it until this article came out. Now today, when I clicked Run Now, it created another backup. However, none since April 7. My backup drive also has lots of room. Disheartening! Judy

Reply | Quote

Mine stopped working also. It ran 13 times after I set it up, so I believed it was working properly. Haven’t checked it until this article came out. Now today, when I clicked Run Now, it created another backup. However, none since April 7. My backup drive also has lots of room. Disheartening! Judy

Hi judson, I soooooooooo wish there was an alternate FREEware with equal chops to the Acronis TrueImage [which has saved my bacon soooooooooo many times for sooooooooooo many years] that I can post here for other forum members to become as religious about backups/archives as I am with my *tib files… :^_^:
Maybe some other member is aware of such a FREEware, but in the interim I would seriously recommend Acronis PAYware to others [Acronis should pay me for such free advertisement for their product].

Reply | Quote

Hi judson, I soooooooooo wish there was an alternate FREEware with equal chops to the Acronis TrueImage [which has saved my bacon soooooooooo many times for sooooooooooo many years] that I can post here for other forum members to become as religious about backups/archives as I am with my *tib files… :^_^:
Maybe some other member is aware of such a FREEware, but in the interim I would seriously recommend Acronis PAYware to others [Acronis should pay me for such free advertisement for their product].

For the kinds of features outlined for File History in the article, I agree that free alternatives to Acronis or Paragon backup products are either hard to find, or do not exist. If I needed these features, I would have to resume paying for a backup solution.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

… Maybe some other member is aware of such a FREEware, but in the interim I would seriously recommend Acronis PAYware to others [Acronis should pay me for such free advertisement for their product].

Upon posting this above reply, I chanced upon the following MacriumReflect FREEware DiskCloning (Imaging) software that may be of use to some of the forum members.
There are 4 different versions of this software and (unfortunately) the FREEware version appears to be not as feature-full as the other 3 PAYware versions.
Personally, I have not (and will not) install/evaluate this program but it maybe of use to someone here.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

The approach to Backup or now called File History by Microsoft is wrong and why is that? I will tell you…….. If and I say IF you are wise enough to put your precious acquired Data over time on another Hard disk, you will be fine when your System has crashed by downloading mal software or hardware failure. And why is that? Because you have back upped ONLY your system not your data, cause your data is safe stored at another place. You only need to restore your system, for you did a backup of that…………and if you are paranoid to have a backup of your data that is also possible, using your backup program for that too. There are many solid Backup Programs like Acronis, Paragon etc. which you can use as your standard backup tool, so you don’t NEED that horrible approach of Microsoft….That’s All Folks!

Reply | Quote

System Backup ONLY

The approach to Backup or now called File History by Microsoft is wrong and why is that? I will tell you…….. If and I say IF you are wise enough to put your precious acquired Data over time on another Hard disk, you will be fine when your System has crashed by downloading mal software or hardware failure. And why is that? Because you have back upped ONLY your system not your data, cause your data is safe stored at another place. You only need to restore your system, for you did a backup of that…………and if you are paranoid to have a backup of your data that is also possible, using your backup program for that too. There are many solid Backup Programs like Acronis, Paragon etc. which you can use as your standard backup tool, so you don’t NEED that horrible approach of Microsoft….That’s All Folks!

I don’t think you explained why it’s wrong or horrible.

Windows 8 has File History for data and Refresh for the system. Why do I need anything else?

Bruce

Reply | Quote

The Win7 File History model is based loosely on the Apple Time Machine model, which was an ok model for backing up the mac as long as the user paid attention to the drive size of his mac being no larger than the external drive used for the Time Machine backup. The Apple backup model had its problems if the Apple OS had issues which could affect Time Machine, the weakness in having any backup being connected to its OS. Hence the advantage of using a third party backup software in any system, windows or Mac, not tied to the OS at all. That being said, the Windows File History system does work, as long as the user pays some attention to the backup, and tests every month or so, just to be sure of the restore of any single file works. For individual PCs or macs, these friendly backup systems are fine, but if you are doing any data backup that has to be reliable, a third party backup with a good tech support department is still the best recommendation, especially if you are considering your backup to be a network backup rather than just a computer backup.

Reply | Quote

File History is easy and fast, but it has one huge disadvantage: as far as I can tell, you can’t restore the backup to a different computer, so it’s useless if your computer is trashed or stolen. I have yet to find a program that creates a full transferable backup and isn’t also, according to Internet posts, buggy with Win8.

Reply | Quote

File History is easy and fast, but it has one huge disadvantage: as far as I can tell, you can’t restore the backup to a different computer, so it’s useless if your computer is trashed or stolen. I have yet to find a program that creates a full transferable backup and isn’t also, according to Internet posts, buggy with Win8.

I agree this is a huge drawback and I have found that it will not restore to a diff hard drive on the same computer. I wonder about how would work on a new replacement hard drive. I installed win 8.1 to a diff hard drive on the same computer and could not access or even see the File History files. It also filled up an external hard drive much too fast. My 1TB ext drive was filled almost to capacity–less than 100gb left–even with File History turned off after an initial trial period and with the highest frequency setting. I would like more control over the settings. Windows 7 system image is so much better and much more useful. That has been an efficient fix for me in the past.

Edit: I would be interested in finding out if there is a setting to allow access to File History from other drives/computers. Maybe there is a setting we are not aware of.

Reply | Quote

I have File History running on my Surface, but I also use Acronis True Image. Every 2-3 years, I have a situation arise such as a bad HD or something I have done which was stupid, that is easily fixed with a full image restore. A few clicks, and time for a cup of coffee, beats a piecemeal system and program restoration.

Reply | Quote

I came across an interesting problem/feature in Windows 8.

I have a spare system that I use for testing. The system has three drives, one to boot Windows, the two other drives configured as a storage pool. These two drives are 150 gig each and thus were about 300 gig in the storage pool. I needed to reinstall W8 because of some issues.

I removed the main W8 boot drive, kept the two drives from the storage pool and went to install a fresh copy. In the drive selection panel of the install for W8 only one drive was shown. The two drives as a single drive of 300 gig. So I removed one of the drives and started the install again. W8 now indicated there were no drives to install W8. I reconnected the drive, booted the install again and W8 now shows just a single drive of 300 gig. The drives are clearly only 150 gig each so W8 is recognizing them as a storage pool.

What this indicates is that it is possible to use storage pool to make a larger W8 boot drive. You would have to configure the drives as a storage pool on a running W8 system. Then remove the drives and transfer the drives to the new system. Boot the W8 DVD to install and W8 should see both drives (or multiple drives) as a single disk drive. A storage pool for a boot system.

I did not want both drives to be considered as one drive so it was necessary to boot W7 install DVD and remove the partitions from the drives. Once this was accomplished W8 now saw two individual drives.

Reply | Quote

I’ve been using Yadis! Backup by Code Essentials for years now. It does all that good stuff, versions, etc. And it’s free. It does take a little bit of a learning curve to tweak it to your own personal preferences.
Dave

Reply | Quote

File History has one major flaw in my opinion: it only backs up user files, and not the whole system, so something else is needed to provide a complete backup solution. I needed something very automatic for my wife, and found Rebit 5. It backs up everything, and claims to be able to restore the entire drive if needed, even to another disk or PC, or individual files. We like it so well that I am now using it on my main PC as well. But I am always a little cautious about backups, so I also do a full image backup using TeraByte Image. I use two external hard drives, and rotate them monthly with the spare stored offsite. I would love to use a Microsoft solution but need it to back up the entire system, and also work on older versions of the OS, which both Rebit and TeraByte Image satisfy. If every app on my PC comes from the Microsoft Store, then I could use that plus File History, but we are years from that as a solution.

Reply | Quote

I really miss Windows 7’s “Previous Versions” file option. I could right click on any file or any directory, choose properties, and one of the tabs would be “Previous Versions,” where I could restore any version of a file or directory for as far back as snapshots/shadow copies were available. Of course, this required the “System Restore” be turned on for the volume where those files were stored. But I think in taking away that option Microsoft has made a step backwards. It’s harder for me to recover previous versions of files in Windows 8.

Reply | Quote

As few other Forum members have indicated the shortcomings of “File History”, it appears this is another half-hearted [strike] errrrrrrrrrr…. a valiant effort by Microsoft and a work in progress!
Even the ‘Advanced Settings’ of File History leave a lot to be desired >> For example:
*Why is it that the user can ONLY select another drive but cannot select a Folder within that drive that these files are to be stored in?
*Why is that it really does not specify to the user which exact user files it is actually making backups of?
*Why should it not give the user additional options to save other important files such as password storage utility data, or FireFox bookmarks, or ThunderBird emails (etc.)?
*Why is it that the user can only choose to make back-ups at a maximum interval of 1 day, rather than also allowing backups every week or every month?

I feel these are a few other critical flaws in the way File History is devised.
And of course, we can make excuses for the lack of such settings (in Advanced Settings section) but this utility is still weak [IMHO].
Although I allow it to run in my system, the last ‘crash episode’ I had a few weeks ago made me resort to re-image my system HDD via Acronis True Image archive (*.tib).
It was a good lesson though: I value my data first-and-foremost, thus I decided that all my “user files” (that are extremely dear to me) should be stored in a second HDD, so that corrupted OS HDD does NOT also take down all my valuable data along with it.
Of course, in a corporate environment requirements are much much different. I feel that for advanced users of Win8OS cannot (and should NOT) solely rely on Microsoft for such archiving needs and a third-party utility should be an additional program to use at all times.

Reply | Quote

Backing Up Windows Files and Folders

It seems that Windows doesn’t reliably back up and restore files and folders when File History is used. While File and Folder Backup are not the main purpose of most System Backup programs, they all can do the job. Problem is, to restore from archives, you need to use the program which created the backups. Still not a good option for me.

It is a bit time-consuming, but I back up any critical data using Windows 8 copy/paste, and 7-ZIP if I want compression to save disk or media space. These compressed files can be expanded onto any location, no matter where they came from. It’s not automatic, and batches of folders and files are not easy to schedule, but there is never an issue with not having a file or folder backed up, and never an issue with not being able to restore a file or folder from the backup.

With Windows 8, I find it isn’t even necessary to use third mass-copying utilities like TeraCopy, but it would be nice to be sure these utilities still do work in Windows 8 for those who prefer these utilities over the native Windows copy/paste routines.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Ola bobprimak,
Acronis TrueImage since (at least) Version 2011 has provided two features that may be what you are seeking: Namely, the facility to be able to ONLY backup the user selected files and the feature to be able to also peek inside the created *.tib files (whether encrypted or compressed) and pluck out the some of the user files at will. I think it also allows for previewing such backups within the WinOS environment but I prefer to boot to Acronis’ environment (via Acronis Media Builder CDR) without adding another layer of complexity of running it under WinOS. My personal preference is also to NOT create *.tib archives in an ‘incremental’ manner which it also allows. Of course, one can also setup a schedule for when the Acronis archives should be created and also confirm the integrity of the created archives but then I also have troubles driving a car with an automatic transmission!
:o: Cheers!

Reply | Quote

“For Windows 8, Microsoft rethought the concepts of PC backups and created File History, a highly automated, set-and-forget archiving system. The goal was to make backing up a PC so easy and unobtrusive that most Windows users would actually do it.”

I don’t have, nor do I plan to have, Windows 8. I simply don’t see enough compelling reason to upgrade from Windows 7. That said, I am not sure whether Microsoft rethought concepts or “borrowed ideas from” for their File History system. It looks very much like a cluttered, clumsy version of Apple’s Time Machine for OS X. I’m just sayin’.

Reply | Quote

	TOP STORY Understanding Windows 8’s File History
	By Fred Langa File History is a radical departure from all previous Windows backup systems. Here’s what you need to know about File History: why it’s so different, its requirements, its advanced settings — and some useful tweaks!

---

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/understanding-windows-8s-file-history (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

[/tr][/tbl]

I have a four-hard drive SATA RAID system I use with Windows 7. Two matching 400gb drives which I consider my System drive mirrored for C: and two matching 500gb drives mirrored for G: which I consider my Data drive for data and dnloads. I’ve experienced a couple of times where the Intel Raid manager has reported one of the mirrored volumes as experiencing a problem but the one in trouble has always been successfully rebuilt.

Obviously this setup doesn’t prevent me from doing something stupid like erasing a file I wished I hadn’t erased. Like a single volume, something like this can be retrieved if recognized in a timely manner.

What are your comments on the relative merits of a RAID strategy?

Reply | Quote

I’ve been using File History for some months now and as far as I’m concerned it does exactly what it says on the tin. I use Macrium Reflect to create an image once a week, and File History backs up those files which have been changed since that image, so I don’t lose that week’s work. It isn’t a full backup system – it doesn’t claim that, but it does keep files backed up plus previous versions. To get to older version of one of my files on MR I have to mount the image and navigate to said file. With File History I just go there using File Explorer, click on history and click the green button till I find the version of the file I require. Easy peasy. It isn’t a full backup (ah la MR et al) but then it doesn’t claim to be. It isn’t perfect (what software is?) but if all else fails I can connect the external hard disk to another PC and use File Explorer to navigate to whatever files I need. They have the date and time they were saved added to the filename but I can see them. I haven’t got another Win 8 PC to test how easy it would be to use get files using File History – I would hope it works but I don’t actually know. But then, do we test our backups to ensure we can restore from them?:p

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

Reply | Quote

Ya, it sound like a lot of folks are trying to make File History into more than it is. For the non-hobbyist who saves everything in the standard default locations it sounds like a viable daily data backup method. Data is king so if Microsoft is going to de-emphasize imaging in favor of data backup for the non-sophisticated users, I can’t fault them for that.

Reply | Quote

Fred, there’s a lot of useful info in this piece on File History, a feature I hadn’t even noticed in 8 months of Win 8 use (!). However, there’s a big piece missing: what is the relationship between what’s (oddly) called “Windows 7 File Recovery” (“Back up or restore your files”) and File History? Second, if one is using the former (backup), as I run automatically every day, the first message one encounters in opening File History is to disable backup. Now, maybe that’s a temporary harmless step…or maybe not.

For a backup of files, and hence easy access, I’ve been using SyncBack Pro for a couple of years. Once one figures out its idiosyncracies, it works well.

With regard to Windows backups, here’s a question maybe worth addressing: I see two folders: one with my name – that has a series of “Backup Sets” by date, the other called “WindowsImageBackup” which, digging down, has the last backup. What do those folders represent and what is their relationship? Why do the Backup Sets just keeps adding until one runs out of disk space?

Reply | Quote

On my backup drive File History created the following folders:

FileHistory
___pete0_000 (which is my user name)
_____PETER
_______Configuration
_________Data
___________$OF
___________C
___________D

I understand the C and D folders which relate to my computer’s drives. Could someone explain what is this folder $OF ? It appears to contain many sub directories (folders) with numerical names (2842, 3095, 3285, …thru…150371, 150485, 150490). Within say folder 150485 is individual files 150487, 150546, 150547…150552) Each of these individual files could be a mp4 mp3 doc epub pdf bmp avi, etc. Why aren’t these folders and files listed under the C or D folders?:huh:

Reply | Quote

File History is working as advertised on my machine (at least for now). My minor issue is: where is the tiled app version? I can only run it in desktop mode. The net is full of screenshots and descriptions for running the tiled app version, but on my machine the app does not show up during an app search or on the “show all apps” view. Am I alone in this ? Is anyone using the tiled app for File History ? Where did you find it ?

Reply | Quote

File History is working as advertised on my machine (at least for now). My minor issue is: where is the tiled app version? I can only run it in desktop mode. The net is full of screenshots and descriptions for running the tiled app version, but on my machine the app does not show up during an app search or on the “show all apps” view. Am I alone in this ? Is anyone using the tiled app for File History ? Where did you find it ?

I don’t think there is one (but there should be). Any links to all the screenshots and descriptions of it?

Bruce

Reply | Quote

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/how-use-file-history

This link to a microsoft site has a video demonstrating the file history app in action – obviously on the tiled interface. Can’t find it on my machine…

These instructions from another linked microsoft page also describe the procedure for finding the tiled app:

Open File History by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you’re using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering File History in the search box, tapping or clicking Settings, and then tapping or clicking File History.

Again – does not work.
Chris

Reply | Quote

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/how-use-file-history

This link to a microsoft site has a video demonstrating the file history app in action – obviously on the tiled interface. Can’t find it on my machine…

These instructions from another linked microsoft page also describe the procedure for finding the tiled app:

Again – does not work.

The video and instructions just show how to reach the File History desktop app from the start screen. You can see that from the taskbar at the bottom of the File History window.

Bruce

Reply | Quote

Thanks Bruce – I was searching for “File History” under “apps” and nothing came up – when I searched under “settings”, a tiled shortcut came up which, as you say, pointed to the desktop app. I’m slowly catching on to this new start page: just because it looks like a tile does not mean it is a tile that connects to a tiled app. Which I should obviously realize because most of the old style applications like office show up on the tiled menu indistinguishable from new style tiled apps. So although file history is new to windows, it is still an old style desktop only app. Kinda weird…:)

Chris

Reply | Quote