Should I keep file history on or off?
|
Before you start using File History to back up your files, you need to first select where your backups are saved. You can select an externally connected drive, such as a USB drive, or you can save to a drive on a network. There are other choices, but these two provide the best options to help protect your files against a crash or other PC problems. File History
only backs up copies of files that are in the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders and the OneDrive files available offline on your PC. If you have files or folders elsewhere that you want backed up, you can add them to one of these folders. If you're going to use a new external drive, connect it to your PC. If you see a notification asking if you want to configure the drive for File History, select it, and then turn on File History on the screen the appears.
Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search. (If you're using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Search.) Enter File History settings in the search box, and then select File History settings. Select Select a drive, and choose the network or external drive you want to use. Turn on File History. Note: If the network drive you want isn’t in the list of available drives, select Show all network locations. If the drive you want isn’t listed there either, open File History in Control Panel, select Add a network location, and follow the instructions on the screen. File
History regularly backs up versions of your files in the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders and the OneDrive files available offline on your PC. Over time, you'll have a complete history of your files. If the originals are lost, damaged, or deleted, you can restore them. You can also browse and restore different versions of your files. For example, if you want to restore an older version of a file (even if it wasn't deleted or lost), you can browse through a timeline, select
the version you want, and restore it. Follow these steps to restore files or folders using File History. Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Search (or if you're using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer down, and then click Search), enter restore your files in the search
box, and then select Restore your files with File History. Enter the name of file you're looking for in the search box, or use the left and right arrows to browse through different versions of your folders and files. Select what you want to restore to its original location, and then select the Restore button. If you want to restore your files to a different location than the original, press and hold or right-click the Restore button, select Restore To, and then choose a new location. Need more help?Here’s Why You Should Be Using Windows 10 File HistoryDon’t you hate it? You start adjusting a document and you accidentally saved over your good copy. All of your hard work just flashes before your eyes. Luckily Windows 10 has a nifty feature you might not know about. Windows 10 File History can back up older versions of your files as you work on them. In addition, it can store them onto external hard drives. As time passes, you slowly grow your library from the various past versions, and you can recover files from many different points in time. Let’s say you liked the formatting from one of the first versions of a file. Unfortunately, you deleted it. With File History in Windows 10, you can retrieve the correct version of the document. How to Get File History on Windows 10You can access this file recovery tool from the Control Panel, or you can use the Settings app. All you need to do is open up your Settings app, and visit the Update & Security > Backup tab. Once you have reached this point, you will hook up an external hard drive to your PC, and the process is similar for using Control Panel. You hit the “+” and hit “Add a Drive.” Once you have done this, you will see a prompt that lets you select the external drive. You will choose the external drive that you want. Activating File HistoryAfter you activate File History, it will begin to archive your data. The on and off slider will appear under a heading known as, “Automatically back up my files.” As a default feature, Windows 10 automatically backs up all of the folders under the User folder. If you want to add other folders in File History or remove them, you will hit the More Options selection. From here the process is as simple as selecting “Add a Folder” next to the “+” sign at the top of your list. Excluding FoldersTo exclude a folder, you will just add it to the exclusion list at the bottom of the page. This will allow you to exclude folders that could just take up space on your external hard drive. This might be helpful to exclude items that are not changing on a regular basis. Windows 10 File history should be used as a great resource to quickly recover files, but it should not be used as a backup replacement. Click here to learn more about Windows’ built in Back-up software. Accessing the Older Versions of a FileAfter you have enabled Windows 10 File History, you’ll finally be able to take a look at how this tool works. To get started, you right-click on this through File Explorer, and you will select Properties from there. Once the Properties window pops up, you will choose the Previous Versions tab. This gives you easy access to the archived versions of the files. You can easily see the times and dates of each incremental change in your file, as you have modified it. Should You Be Using Window’s File History?Should you use the Windows 10 File History feature? In truth, it’s quite hard to think of a lot of disadvantages and reasons for not using this system. What would be a great improvement to this system is if you didn’t have to manually turn it on. You could simply right-click on a file and restore the previous versions as needed. The design of File History is particularly cool. It’s easy to navigate, and you can find exactly what you’re looking for. This Doesn’t Replace a Full Back-up!As useful and easy to use as this feature is, it DOES NOT replace the need for a full system back-up. In the event of a Windows crash or hardware failure, you will still want to have an image or file back-up handy to recover your system and documents. To read more about Windows 10 File History feature, check out this article by Microsoft. RelatedSummary Reviewer Eric Moore Review Date 2018-05-25 Reviewed Item Windows 10 File History Author Rating 5 Is it OK to delete file history?To delete everything you need to go to the backup drive and delete manually the folder named FileHistory , where are stored all File History backup. There is no problem in just deleting it.
What happens when you turn off file history?Enabling or Disabling File History in Windows 10
It will backup user's folders like libraries, desktop, favorite folder, and so on. File History will ignore the file during back up when they are in use by applications. By default, in Windows 10, File History will not be enabled.
What happens when file history is enabled?File History regularly backs up versions of your files in the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders and the OneDrive files available offline on your PC. Over time, you'll have a complete history of your files.
How important is file history?File History can save its backups to many different storage solutions, which include the following: An external hard drive or USB drive connected to a user's computer. A network server. A Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.
|
