File History--Seting it up.

[chiangrai]

I have windows 8.1 and I want to set up File History for the first time.

I have watched a few videos on YouTube and have a few questions.

!--Where can I put it.Can I save it for free online.My Windows is an original version and I only need about 50GB of space.

2-- I see on the videos that File History saves everything and if you don't want something saved you exclude it.

The thing with me is that I only want to save 2 folders.One in Users and one in Disk D.I don't want to save Libraries or anything else.

How would this work.

[Utley]

Normally, people save copies of their files on an external hard drive. If your main drive fails, the external will be your back-up. You can select to only save the files you want; you don't have to save the libraries. The Windows backup software will update those saved files daily (if you choose) with any changes. I would also save an "image" back-up of your entire system in case everything fails on you along with system "start-up" files on a memory stick.

[chiangrai]

I've got an external hard drive plugged into a USB outlet but File History is saying that it doesn't recognize this drive.

It's a 500GB drive with loads of stuff saved on it already and is formated to NFTS.

What can I do about this.

[chiangrai]

So it wouldn't recognize ,y 500GB external drive so I plugged in a 32GB flash drive and it

recognized it and backed up my files.

Then I restarted my computer and it wouldn't recognize the Flash drive but it would recognize the 500Gb hard drive,the one that it wouldn't recognize before.

What's this all about.

[chiangrai]

Now it's not recognizing any of them and saying that my drive is disconnected and to reconnect my drive.

Would love some help

[VBF]

Now it's not recognizing any of them and saying that my drive is disconnected and to reconnect my drive.

Would love some help

I happened to be playing with File History when your topic appeared in my email.

When you plug these various drives in, does File Explorer (not File History) see them as you expect? If it does not then no App (including File History) will see them.

If it does, can you copy files to and from these drives manually?

Can you eject the drives using the "Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the notification area in the taskbar, then plug them in again and try again?

I believe there can only ever be one File History drive active on a system at a time so possibly (!) backing up to 2 different ones has caused a problem and you need to manually remove one of them. It might be worth plugging them both in at the same time and then actually choosing one of them to be the FH drive

Make sure neither of the drives are part of a Library

Does any of the advice in here http://www.windows10forums.com/threads/backup-and-file-history-not-working.7140/ help?

Is there anything relevant in the Event Viewer?

Edited June 29, 2016 by VBF