Win10 File History giving me the fits!
-
Short story: hard drive died on a computer, replaced it and loaded up Win10.
They had a USB drive connected to File History. The drive is completely full and I see the FileHistory folder on it and all the files from their last backup (sadly, over a month old by the time stamps).
Regardless, I can't get Windows to recover from the previous backup. When I go to select the drive, that part works. When I use the "old" Control Panel to connect the drive, it actually SEES the old backup and tells me the correct timestamp of it. When I say to use it, everything seems to be fine.
But then I go to the Restore Personal Files section and it just tells me "there isn't any history of your files, folders, or libraries."
But of course there is history! It's on the drive, I see it, I see all the files with their file names edited with the time stamp, the drive connect wizard SHOWS me the old backup is there and I can connect to it.
I don't know how else to get it to connect to the old backup and allow me to restore all the files.
I really don't want to have to build some kind of crazy script to read every file and rename them and so forth. I just want File History to do what it's supposed to do! Connect to the old backup!
Ideas?
-
Train users to store files on the network. Seriously though, nothing of any value should be stored locally on PCs. Isn't there a file share setup here?
-
As far as actually doing a recovery via system restore, I am not an expert. I haven't had to do a system restore in years, it just isn't something most businesses need to worry about since files are stored on the network.
-
The backup was a USB drive.
Win10 installed fresh on a new hard drive.
Connected USB and attempted to get FileHistory to connect to it for recovery. Not working. -
-
$0.02: In the future you'd be better off setting up a job in task scheduler to sync folders on the USB drive. That actually works, unlike windows integrated backup solutions (in my experience).
-
@MattSpeller said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
$0.02: In the future you'd be better off setting up a job in task scheduler to sync folders on the USB drive. That actually works, unlike windows integrated backup solutions (in my experience).
Any business with critical files should at a minimum be using mirrored drives for storage. You can get a Buffalo NAS very inexpensively.
-
@IRJ said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
@MattSpeller said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
$0.02: In the future you'd be better off setting up a job in task scheduler to sync folders on the USB drive. That actually works, unlike windows integrated backup solutions (in my experience).
Any business with critical files should at a minimum be using mirrored drives for storage. You can get a Buffalo NAS very inexpensively.
Sometimes you gotta "run what you brung" as it were - but yeah, totally, there are a lot better solutions than USB HDD
-
@MattSpeller said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
@IRJ said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
@MattSpeller said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
$0.02: In the future you'd be better off setting up a job in task scheduler to sync folders on the USB drive. That actually works, unlike windows integrated backup solutions (in my experience).
Any business with critical files should at a minimum be using mirrored drives for storage. You can get a Buffalo NAS very inexpensively.
Sometimes you gotta "run what you brung" as it were - but yeah, totally, there are a lot better solutions than USB HDD
This is alot cheaper and more reliable than playing russian roulette with data then paying an IT guy to fix it because you tried to save $150.
https://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9B-22-165-534&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC--pla--Network+-+Storage-_-9B-22-165-534&gclid=CjwKEAjw97K_BRCwmNTK26iM-hMSJABrkNtb6bJNAnyFcDt3-tA9chhQOd-UNbKgiG3c_BUA2l12XhoCE73w_wcB
-
Right now this guy just wants his files recovered.
I can't just copy them from the USB, it's hundreds of gigs and every single file has an appended timestamp on it.
I need the FileHistory system to recovery them.
-
@guyinpv said in Win10 File History giving me the fits!:
Right now this guy just wants his files recovered.
I can't just copy them from the USB, it's hundreds of gigs and every single file has an appended timestamp on it.
I need the FileHistory system to recovery them.
If it was win8 before you may require win8 to recover
Was it out of disk space? (the USB)
-
Check out this section of the link "Restoring items to an alternate location"
-
The guy believes he did the Win10 free upgrade. And when I installed Win10 it didn't require a code or activation or any of that, it knew who I was and went through fine.
I can't say about the Win8 question though. The backed up files are over a month old so I guess it's totally possible he did the backup set on Win8 and then upgraded Win10 after that. Maybe this is why it never started backing up new files?
I haven't read anything about Win8/10 not being compatible though.
-
@guyinpv I've looked briefly and I can't see anything definitively stating there are compatibility issues between 8 and 10 with file history. It may just be something with the upgrade, could just be typical shitty windows backups failing. Wish I could offer better man. Upvoted the post for visibility.
-
Thanks.
Everything seems to work just fine, it sees the drive, sees the previous backup, seems to connect to it to use, but the Restore screen just says there is nothing to restore, and I see all the files on the USB drive.
-
Just for fun.
Try on an 8 machine.
For goodness sake, slap the user for treating file history as a backup.
-
File History, is this a new name for Previous Versions?
Yes I see it is.
So it uses vss.
Can you move the FileHistory folder to a network share/other storage, then move them back to this computer, then setup FileHistory again(or not).Or can you just copy the files/folders from the usb drive to the local hdd, then set it all up again
-
@Breffni-Potter
To be fair, Win8/8.1/10 treats it as a backup. After all you go in settings and open "Backup" and that's what you see.
Crazy after 72 years Microsoft still hasn't figured out a way to give Windows users a simple backup utility. Half my career is because Windows people never had good backup abilities. They never even figured they needed such things.
-
@guyinpv said
Crazy after 72 years Microsoft still hasn't figured out a way to give Windows users a simple backup utility.
Since Windows 7 I've had the ability to backup system images or files with a built in utility and I've used it on numerous occasions.
File history is a new beast using a different method. The original good working tool was still in Win 8.
-
File history is not a backup.
