Windows 10: Backup Add a drive

Jan. 3rd 2016 I have a 931 GB external HDD using a brick power supply and connected by USB.
I wish to do weekly backups to it via Start/Settings/Update & Security/Backup.
How can I use it please?


It is not listed when I click Add a drive, although I can see and read it in This PC.
I tried a restart but that has not helped. I do see a couple of USB sticks which are too small. Trying via Advanced settings is the same.


Prior to trying to add this drive I scrolled down and followed the instruction which said to delete the previous drive which was also an external HDD connected by sata. I used THAT drive via Macrium and it got carried over in the W10 update from W8.1.

Thanks

:)

 

Windows 10 Backup - No "Add a Drive" option

Hi,

It will show if you click More options.





Then click, See advanced settings.





After that Click File History , Turn on.





Then click Select drive, insert your USB, then select.





Please try these steps and see if your external drive will show.

We'll wait for your reply.

 

Windows 10 Backup - No "Add a Drive" option

You guys don't seem to be understanding the problem. I have gone to the File History settings to tun it on. But the Add a drive option is not there. So I CANNOT TURN ON SOMETHING THAT IS NOT THERE.

That article does not good as the option it mentions does not appear. My problem is that Add a drive does not appear and NOT that I need to turn on File History.

Why would the Add a Drive option not show?

 

Can you see the drive in Disc Manager as well as 'This PC' (explorer).

If so it could be Macrium that is the problem.

Have you tried other backup solutions such as Casper for full disc cloning and DSynchronise for realtime file/folder backup?

 

Thanks pewe.
Before your reply I found what I think is the problem. It may be that the drive needs to be formatted to use File History. Why?... I don't know as I used it for non-backup tasks with W8, but that is what W10 seemed to say.
Unless I find that is not the case I am not going to mess with formatting as the drive has a large collection of movies on it that I want to keep.
Possibly I could partition and format the partition but once again I do not want to risk it.

When I saw that W10 could be scheduled to do hourly backups I thought that would be good on the drive in question which I would leave permanently hooked up. Then once a month I would use my faithful Macrium to my external HDD connected by sata which I keep offsite.

I WILL check your Disk Manager suggestion when I get a chance to access the computer in question again.

 

I checked Disk Management and the HDD is there. The file system is NTFS whereas my couple of USB sticks, which are acceptable to
Start/Settings/Update & Security/Backup/ Add a Drive are FAT32 so I guess that is the problem.

I cannot find where I read that the drive for backups should be an external drive and/or that it should be using USB but as my drive is USB I thought I was following instructions. If I am correct I think it would be VERY useful if, in addition to MS stating to connect an external drive by USB, the Add a Drive button was labelled "Add a drive ( FAT32-formatted)"

There must be things I don't understand.

 

You really do not want to format a drive as FAT32 for backups as max file size is 4GB, and max partition size (without using 3rd party software) is 32GB.

NTFS is fine, even on usb sticks, unless you want to read drive on a mac say where the newer exFAT is useful.

 

Thx Sir Eberus *Wink. I too thought of the file size limitation with FAT32 but nevertheless my W10 is only listing FAT32 drives via the Add a drive button. Maybe the MS system compresses to accommodate?

You say NTFS is fine. So how do I get my NTFS external HDD which is connected by USB into the list shown by the Add a Drive button??

I am ultra sceptical about the MS backup systems as I was caught out previously. What happened was that I was backing up like a good boy then HDD C: failed. I replaced it with an SSD as most people now do. Multi restore attempts failed. Then I found you cannot restore to another drive that is smaller than the one from which the backups originated. The system does not warn you of this beforehand.
Perhaps I am naive to expect MS to provide such warnings. Heaps of people must have been caught out by that trick as (due to the cost) most people get SSD's which are smaller than their failed drives.
With my new W10 I thought I would use the MS backup instead of Macrium but Macrium is looking better and better right now.