Windows 10: Restoring from File History created on old computer to a new computer

I'm thinking this should be easy, but it isn't turning out that way.

Computer A is dying, has a current File History. I am setting up Computer B and I want to use File History on B to restore from A. Instead, B can't see A's File History and just insists on creating its own. I don't want it to corrupt the backup on A's history

So the File History of A is on an external drive. I connect the external drive to B and go to File History. B just wants to write a File History of B and can't see the ones created by A.

Help, please!

Or am I just better off copying everything to an external drive and then copying it back to the new laptop?

:)

 

File History in Windows 10 will not restore files from old PC to new PC

I used file history to back up my files from my surface pro 3 to an external hard drive. I damaged my surface pro 3 and got a new computer, a surface pro 4.

I turned on File History on my new pro 4 so I could move my files on the external HD from my old computer to the hard drive to my new computer. File History proceeded to back up my new computer to the hard drive so I now have two sets of backup files
- one from my old computer and one from my new computer.

The problem is I that I cannot get File History to restore the files from my old computer to my new computer. When I try to restore the old files on the external HD to my new computer File History will only look at the backups it made of the new computer

Looking at the directory structure on the external HD there are the two sets of backup files under the top directory as shown below:

E:\FileHistory\myname\name_of_new_computer\

E:\FileHistory\myname\name_of_old_computer\

How can I get File History to read and restore the files from my old computer on my external drive to my new computer?

 

Will File History keep my files from my old computer forever or I must restore them all to the new one?

My Old computer broke. Thankfully I had File History set up that perfectly backed up my files. It was configured to keep the backups for 1 month.

I got a New computer and successfully configured File History to use the backup from the Old computer, so now I can conveniently restore my files. I used the same configuration settings here, so it keeps my files also for 1 month.

My question is:

What is going to happen after 1 month with my files that were backed up from my Old computer but not restored to the New one? Will File History keep them, or will delete them?

In other words:

Do I have to restore everything from the backup of the Old computer, because File History on the New computer will delete them from the backup after 1 month, or I can restore only what I need at the moment, because File History on the New computer ignores
the files backed up from the Old computer, so they will be available forever in the backup?

Thanks,

György

 

Yes. What you are trying is impossible, file history is individual on each machine even if you had same folder structure and user account. It can't be copied to another machine.

 

OK, thanks for clarifying that. I'll carry on copying my stuff. *Smile

 

This has me rethinking the usefulness of File History. I thought that in the event of a catastrophe, such as hard drive failure, that File History provided some protection...as in, if you needed to replace your hard drive or your entire computer, all of your goodies would be safely backed up. However, if I can only restore to the original computer environment, where is the protection in that? If it were merely my hard drive being replaced, would I find myself unable to get at all of that File History? My hard drive actually is showing signs of failure, which is why I am migrating to a new computer and I thought I had things covered.

If this is the case, I am going to have to obtain some third party software, which I actually do have. I just haven't been using it because I was under the impression that the windows File History was just a smoother way of dealing with things.