Windows 10: File History Won't Clean Up Old Copies

I had, out of ignorance, set my file history to back up my files and never delete the unneeded copies. Needless to say, File History on my external drive has become huge over 87gb. I tried to clean up older copies but couldn't. It gave me the error message "Could not clean up File History data Element not found". Is there any way I can make this work, or a work around other than manually going through the thousands of files and manually deleting every unneeded file? I would just dump it all and start from fresh, but I have some old files that I no

:)

 

How to stop File History on the old drive and start File History on a new drive?

I use the external drive
for File History and have a lot of information there. I want to restart the File History process on a new drive and place the previous File History drive off-site.

Please suggest the steps to stop File History on the old drive and start File History on a new drive.

 

File History never copies anything

Hi,

Temporary system failure is one of the possible reasons why this issue is happening. To help resolve the issue, we suggest deleting the files in the USB drive. Follow the steps below:

• Open Settings > Update & Security > Backup > More Options.
  
• Click Stop using this drive.
  
• Delete the File History folder on your external drive.
  
• Try again to add the USB drive to backup File History.
  

Keep us in the loop with the result.

 

Java.nio.file - Copying files

You can't copy a folder, thats why it generates an exception (you are trying to copy a folder using a copy file function).
You probably need to list all the files inside that folder and copy one by one