Windows 10: Backup to Flash Drive

I am experimenting backing up my personal documents on to a flash drive (no moving parts) rather than an external hard drive but I'm facing a problem creating folders on the flash drive. Say my computer is called XYZ, the external hard drive allows me to create folders, like \XYZ\Documents, \XYZ\Music, \XYZ\photos, etc. but the flash drive does not allow me to use \ in my folder name. Am I doing something wrong or is this normal behaviour for a flash drive? Thanks in advance for all help.

:)

 

Is clean install necessary if using used hard drive with data on it?

Thanks for the reply Andre! But i am still a little confused. I am putting my files on the flash drive as my backup. Will using my old hard drive on the new computer erase all of the data on it and force me to upload it back from the flash drive or will
it stay on there and no need for using the backup?

and will i be able to install windows 10 on the new computer from the flash drive if it has my backup folders on it as well as the windows installation? I am using the flashdrive instead of an external hard drive as my backup. My plan is to use the flash
drive as my hard drive info back up as well as installing windows at the same time.

Alex

 

Low Disk Space Pop-up from Windows Explorer. Why is this continually appearing? See attached photo-bottom right corner.

What is the D:\ drive that is shown as low on disk space. Is it the flash drive or an internal drive.

If it is the flash drive then you will just need to remove it. Perhaps there is no longer enough space on the flash drive to carry out a another backup and the percentage left is enough to trigger the warning.

I notice no other users that may have tried to use a flash drive have come forward with a solution. You may have to wait for another response to try to answer the question regarding turning on file history. What is the status in Settings > Update and security
> Backup of Automatically backup my files.

 

\ is not an allowed character in a folder name for obvious reasons.
Assuming you are in the USB drive, in my case (E:\) you would make folders for Documents, Music, Photos etc.
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...2-eb39e07630fa

 

From a command prompt

md xyz

cd xyz

md documents

md music

md photos

etc.

 

The \ character is used to separate path components and cannot be used in folder or file names. This is the case for all versions of Windows and all Windows file systems and for all devices. In the example of "XYZ\photos" "XYZ" and "photos" are separate folders, "photos" being a subfolder of "ZYX".