Windows 10: File History Not Backing Up Files in OneDrive Folder

Goal: Create a backup of all of my Documents onto an external hard drive.I've had some problems with OneDrive missing or overwriting revisions of Word and Excel documents I work with on my laptop. I am the only one who works on these files. I do a lot of Ctrl-S and Save As as I'm working. I've solved the lost-revisions problem by copying the folders that had sync errors until every folder was resolved showed a green sync circle icon. Then, after I was sure everything was syncing okay, I UNchecked the default in the box "OneDrive - Settings - Settings - Files On-Demand - Save space and downlo

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Backing Up OneDrive Folder with File History

I am backing two computers - a desktop and a laptop, both running Windows 10 - to an external hard drive via File History. On each computer, the majority of our files are in a OneDrive folder, so I have included OneDrive on the list of folders to back
up. On the desktop, all subfolders in the OneDrive folder back up just fine (Erika's Pictures, Erika's Music, Erika's Documents). On the laptop, Peter's Music and Peter's Documents back up, but Peter's Pictures does not. To get it to back up, I have to manually,
separately, add it to the list of folders that File History includes. Obviously, this is easy enough to do, but I don't understand why it is happening or how to fix it. Any ideas? Thank you.

 

File History not backing up OneDrive Documents folder (but correctly backing up other OneDrive folders)

I have my Documents folder and all my photos located in my OneDrive, so that they are always backed up to the cloud. I have previously successfully also used File History to back up all my user files and
libraries (including the OneDrive folder) to a local external drive and it has worked fine for many years. However, recently I noticed that there is something strange happening with the Documents subfolder in the OneDrive folder of the File History backup
when I went to restore a previous version of a file in OneDrive\Documents and the 'Restore personal files' view showed
only a small number of files and folders, not the whole of the current contents of the OneDrive\Documents folder. Moreover, instead of the most recent automatic backup date showing (effectively) the current state of the OneDrive\Documents folder,
it only showed files that had been modified since the previous automatic backup date. If I manually went backwards in time through the backups, I could see other files in my OneDrive\Documents folder that had been modified previously and were still currently
in that folder, but for some reason were not showing in the 'Restore personal files' view of the most recent backup.

I thought something must have gotten out of sync with the File History database, so I stopped the file history service, deleted the
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory folder, deleted the File History backup folder from the external drive and then rebooted the PC. As expected after rebooting and going into Control Panel -> File History it showed that
File History was off and there was no File History drive set. I then created a new File History backup to the external drive and checked that there were no 'excluded folders' set. Absolutely everything else got backed up correctly in the new backup, except
for just the OneDrive\Documents folder, which wasn't created at all in the new backup. For example, my OneDrive\Pictures folder backup correctly had all 22.3GB of data comprising 13,067 files and 255 folders, exactly as expected.

I then modified a test file in my OneDrive\Documents folder, clicked on 'Run Now' in File History and then checked the backup. There was now a Documents folder showing in the OneDrive folder, but it contained
just that one test file I had modified.

I tried the suggestion I had seen in a previous discussion thread about this problem of manually adding the full OneDrive\Documents path to the list of backed up folders. It was already there in the list,
but I tried adding it anyway. It made no difference and the folder is still not being backed up.

Why isn't File History backing up all of the folders in OneDrive and selectively refusing to back up just the Documents folder?

 

File History Not Backing Up OneDrive Local Files

Hi John,

I have exactly the same issue with File History. I have become aware this evening that the File History component isn't backing up the local replica of my OneDrive folder following the upgrade to the Fall Creators Update.

The last backup of my local OneDrive replica was last Friday, the 20th of October 2017 - prior to the upgrade.

This evening I realised this and went about trying some things. Initially, I did the following;

• Disabled File History
• Went into the folder - %appdata%\Local\Microsoft\windows\FileHistory and deleted everything
• Re-enabled File History - a backup ran, but nothing within the OneDrive folder was backed up

I then did the following;

• Disabled File History
• Went into the folder - %appdata%\Local\Microsoft\windows\FileHistory and deleted everything
• Formatted the external drive
• Re-enabled File History - ran a backup up, it ran but it didn't backup the local OneDrive replica

I then had a check of the File History settings within both the Control Panel and the Settings app; within the Control Panel, nothing is excluded and within the Settings app, the OneDrive folder is selected.

I ran a few more backups, each time the backup ran and completed but the OneDrive folder is ignored!

OneDrive has the default options enabled - so the Files on Demand option is enabled. I switched this off and tried again - the OneDrive isn't being backed up. I switched it back on - still no back up.

I can confirm that File History was backing up the local OneDrive replica under the Creators Update. It has stopped following the upgrade to the Fall Creators Update!

I am a big OneDrive user and I have 823MB of data downloaded to my laptop which isn't being backed up. I am not happy with this!

This appears to be a wide spread issue... so I would expect Microsoft engineers to be working on explaining and resolving this issue.

Can I please ask if Microsoft is aware of this? Are they working on a fix for this issue? When will the fix be available?

I have created an item of Feedback, which is detailed here - Windows Insider Program

Many thanks in advance,

Kind regards,

Neil