Win10 File History giving me the fits!
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File history is not a backup.
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@JaredBusch said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
File history is not a backup.
This is a very important point. For me to consider something a backup it must meet this criteria:
It must have the ability to be restored independently from the original system. This means it cannot be dependent on a specific installation or hardware for the ability to restore. You should always be able to restore your backup to another system in case of a complete hardware failure.
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@IRJ said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
@JaredBusch said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
File history is not a backup.
This is a very important point. For me to consider something a backup it must meet this criteria:
It must have the ability to be restored independently from the original system. This means it cannot be dependent on a specific installation or hardware for the ability to restore. You should always be able to restore your backup to another system in case of a complete hardware failure.
I agree. I call this decoupling and it goes a little farther. If the original system is destroyed it should not automatically take the "backup" with it.
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I don't understand why FileHistory is not a backup.
It is taking a file on your computer and copying it to a backup medium (network, USB, etc).
Then depending on settings, when it sees a file has changed, it makes a new copy with a new time stamp. Could be hourly, daily, weekly, etc. It keeps all previous copies for full date-based rollback capabilities.
It then can be set for when the older copies are deleted. Either a month's worth, or just when drive space is needed etc.
The backed up files are not encrypted, compressed, or put in any weird format. They simply have a time stamp added to their file names.
So far all this sounds like a backup to me.
The only thing that is "proprietary" is the file stamp on the file name. Without the Windows tool to help strip these out and recover only newer files, a fancy script of some kind would have to be used to find the latest files, copy them out, and remove the time stamps.
I used the Bulk Rename Utility to remove time stamps and just copied the files manually. If there had been numerous files with multiple time stamps, it would have made things much harder.
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I think the reason this cant be called a backup is that it doesn't seem to want to work as one. In your OP, you state that you get an error when trying to restore these files because windows doesn't recognize them as restorable. This is probably because the FileHistory application requires some sort of metadata that only exists/existed on the original system drive, which is now gone.
I imagine this FileHistory feature will go down as something to be avoided at all costs, like mobsync.exe
Previous versions I liked. A lot. At least for Windows file shares. This FileHisotry seems like a pain, for you at least. I didn't even know it existed until this thread.
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@guyinpv because it is not a backup. it is a copy of a file. And only files that were modified. If you never changed a file, it will not be there.
FFS this is not rocket science. this is basic definitions.
From my Windows 10 R1607 desktop.
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Windows backup
No more screenshots because I am not going to set it up just to point out the full solution for you.
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@JaredBusch
I think your "definitions" are getting a little mixed up.If someone creates a "system image" backup, it's really only meant to restore the entire image to the same computer. This breaks early definition that we should be able to restore any file to any computer, or different computer.
I suppose there is probably a method of extracting just files out of an image, from another machine.Second it didn't just backup files that were "modified". Apparently when he turned on FileHistory, it backed up everything. Unless you're suggesting he immediately "changed" 58,000 files after turning it on?
And since you're talking about "basic definitions", I think "copy of a file" is a nice basic definition....a copy of a file, on some other media. If I had no other backup options whatsoever, I would at least hope for copies of files!
I don't think FileHistory is perfect by any means, nor have I ever suggested anybody use it. But to the uninformed, when you go in Windows 10 to the "backup" section, this is what they present to people, who will likely NOT go find the little link at the bottom left of the page for the "real" backup, nor understand the difference between the "real" backup and the "fake kinda-backup sorta" thing.
Lastly, despite your condescension, FileHistory DID give them month old files, and without it, they would have nothing whatsoever. So I'll take THAT backup option any day over not having any files at all! I'm glad this person at least turned it on, they were trying, God love them, and they got their files back.
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@guyinpv a copy is not a backup. Others have told you what a backup is.
The system image link, as the screenshot shows, does the system image and user space files.
That the file history makes an immediate copy is great. I do not believe it did that in Windows 7, which is the only time I have used it.
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A true backup is read only and can not be [easily] modified. Otherwise it's replication.
