Windows 10: Do I need Both Win 10's File History and Win 7's Backup?

I have them both, and I'm beginning to get faith in indexing and I wonder if I need to keep the Windows 7's back up regime.

The only problem I have with indexing is it seems to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger - and I don't know what to do.

My entire data drive*(E) is ~ 100Gigs, yet my file history drive is almost 300Gigs.

*I have a SSD for programs (C), and one data drive E, and one partitioned removable drive F & H
Data drive E is backed up by File History to H on my removable drive.
My Win 7 Back up of E goes to F on my removable drive

So my issue is:
If you had a choice to make would you keep File History, or Windows 7's back up system?
And why is my file history getting so large?

Thanks in advance...

:)

 

Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file.

I have found the way out eventually. Replace bootmgr of windows 7 with that of windows 10. Just this!

Do you want to know why? read below;

thing that bootmgr do is that Bootmgr finds the winloader.exe in sys32 and executes it. when you install win 10 while there is a win 7 in your hard drive, win 10 replace win 7's bootmgr with a new one and keeps a copy in win 10's sys32. This bootmgr can
find winloaders of win7 & win10 and execute them depends on selected windows for startup. Therefore for recovery of windows 10 we must replace the bootmgr of win 7 with bootmgr of win 10. How to do? read below;

Go to safe mode. Change the bootmgr of both win7 and win 10 from system file to usual ones by "iReset" software. Now you can do the replacement.

 

Windows Backup and Restore skipping files when writing to external hard drive.

Thanks for responding. Actually, I am using Backup and Restore. I have been using that since before I upgraded Win 7 Pro to 10 Pro. I haven't used file history, or Win 10's backup feature. I just always have used that. I didn't know if I could just
delete the files from the registry. If not, if I used File History, say, how do I stop those files from trying to back up also?

 

That is normal. File History keeps multiple different versions of your documents from different dates. You can manage how much history you want it to keep.

Delete Older Versions of File History in Windows 10

Change how Long to Keep File History in Windows 10

To be honest, the more types of backups you keep the better. It isn't really an 'either/or' choice - you can use both. You can never have too many backups *Smile

'Backup and Restore (Windows 7)' is a deprecated feature in the Fall Creators Update. It may be removed in later versions of Windows 10.

Features removed or Deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

There are better solutions to the two functions Backup and Restore provides, backing up your files and making a system image to restore a working system to your disk , should it fail or become corrupted. Most here recommend Macrium Reflect (free).

 

Without a doubt File History. If you delete some file and backup your system the deleted file will not be there.

If you deleted all your tax records 2 years ago where will they be? In your latest backup (Windows 7 style or Macrium)? Nope they will not.

They will be in your backup from 2 years ago (assuming you remembered when you deleted them and restored the correct backup). Alternatively you can just flick back in time through File History until you find them and the fact it was 26 months not 24 doesn't matter.

Both would be the best answer but given a choice, File History. It is trivial to reinstall Windows and only takes 20 minutes.

Just make sure your file History drive isn't permanently connected so if you get ransomeware it isn't corrupted too.

 

I try to keep my back up drive unplugged, but do you know of a way it could be disabled in device manager, and started up automatically only when it's time to back up when the computer is idle, and the chance of getting ransom ware remote (since no one is operating the computer).

And thanks to all for the advice. I'll probably dump Win 7 back up, remove the partition and dedicate the drive to File History but shorten the retention period if it heads for a Tetrabyte.

 

"...but do you know of a way it could be disabled in device manager, and started up automatically..." You have to both disable and re-enable said divice within device manager. I know of no automatic software way to re-enable that external device.

 

I'm sure if it was easy and effective, someone would have done it!

 

Better to physically disconnect - anything you can do programmatically so, potentially, could malware. File History will store changes and flush them to backup disk automatically when you connect it.

 

one more question. If I used Win 7 to make a system image (C drive), will I be able to load it using Win 10?

Btw, I have no data on the C drive, only the O/S and programs, so this should be the entire image, with data backed up by File History. That is my new plan.