Windows 10: Backup File History doesn't appear to be working / Missing folders

Greetings all!


I've been working with my music library, and in a moment of confusion I lost a considerable part of my library. I couldn't recover from the Recycle Bin because when I deleted the files Windows informed me there were too many files and if I wanted to permanently delete them. I thought they were duplicates, so I did. They weren't.


I've had File History running to an external drive since July of last year, set for Daily. When I went to restore the files from backup, they were not there. My last backup appeared to be in August of last year. There is one for January 21st (today is 25th), but the number of folders dropped from 172 in my music folder on the previous backup, to 62. From File Manager, there are 186 folders current as of now.


Knowing that File History runs when it can, sure it may miss a few days if the PC is powered down or whatever. It'll run when it get an opportunity to do so. Nothing for today, so I manually executed a backup. Looking at Restore again, nothing for today. Searching from File Manager in my backup drive the new CDs were not there. Still from File Manager, the music dir itself contained 172 folders, most have a modified date of 7/28 and 8/4 of 2018. Again, still 62 folders from the Windows Restore. My backup drive has 1.43 TB free.


I had a career of close to 40 years in telecommunications and maintaining reliable backups was an essential part of it. I seldom worked on anything like a PC or Windows - primarily linux midrange servers. But that many years instilled in me a abnormally high sense of the importance of backups. I would seriously like to know what is going on here. I am tempted to wipe my backup drive and start again, but the brainfart I described in my first paragraph makes me reluctant to do so. Windows simplifies itself too much for my taste so getting the details I want eludes me.


Any advice or help appreciated!


-jrt

:)

 

Backup These Folders in File History

My Pictures and My Videos folders are inside the My Documents folder. In File History all three folders are listed in the Backup These Folders list. Does this mean that because of this, files in Pictures and Videos are backuped twice? Once when backing up
My Documents and once when backing up My Pictures and My Videos (included in My Documents)

 

How to remove folders from File History

That does not work. Even though I do the delete from the "Back up these folders" from the list, it still backs it up - and when I close out of Settings and then go back in, the folder re-appears in the list.

However, Mila's suggestion worked. Is it possible that folders in my Library cannot be removed from the "Back up these folders" list?

 

How to remove folders from File History

• I had the same problem, and I solved in this way:
  Control Panel -> System and Security-> File History -> Turn off
  Settings -> Update & Security -> Backup -> More options -> Stop using this drive
  Delete the File History folder in your external drive.
  Start using File History again.
  After performing these steps, I can easily add folders to "Excluded Folders" and they remain excluded. I checked in the actual files and folders saved on the external disk, and it works.
  I did not modify the default settings about how often and how long backup is saved, File History is working ok now. So I guess it is important to click "Stop using this drive" in order to reset File History.
  Hope this will be helpful