Windows 10: Windows 10 File History Not Backing Up Automatically

I've had Windows 10 file history enabled since i got Windows 10 on release.

It backs up every hour and has been working fine for over a year.

A few days ago i went to restore a file and noticed that the file was not in the backup. I checked my backup, and noticed that it had not been backing up for a few days.

I checked file history settings and its still set to back up every hour. If i manually back up, it works fine, but it does NOT automatically backup every hour.

I have tried turning file history off and on, but no resolve.

In the meantime i have been manually opening file history and backing up once a day, but obviously that isn't ideal.

Can anyone assist?

:)

 

File History Not Automatically Backing Up to WD NAS

File History is working as it is supposed to. My workaround of setting a higher frequency of backup addresses the problem of Outlook being open during the backup process causing failure. I'll get a lot of event log "failure" entries, but will - and have
- gotten at least one successful File History backup daily. Note that I have changed the frequency from the 6 hours posted above to 3 hours.

Thanks Emmanuel.

 

File History Not Automatically Backing Up to WD NAS

You lost me with your first paragraph Emmanuel - for the life of me I can find no setting that says the equivalent of "Run File History at XX:YYPM". Under Save copies of files, one only has the option of setting the
frequency of backup, not when it backs up. Maybe you are saying that if the user sets a frequency >"daily", the time of day might be able to be set based upon the choice, i.e. if the user sets it to be every hour and initiates this
setting at 1:00PM, then every hour on the hour files would be backed up. If so, I get it and that is what I've done.

My work-around...I've set File History to Save copies of files every 6 hours instead of just daily. What hopefully will occur is that at least one of the 4 times files will be backed up every day will be after MS Outlook is shutdown automatically (I'm using
a vbs script to make this happen) File History will run successfully. It will fail whenever Outlook is open of course since that is one of the files I back up and it is open almost all of the time my PC is on. If this works, I'll report back in 2 days and
mark this one solved.

Thanks again.

 

Welcome to tenforums lumpycustard *Smile

I don't use that function to backup files, this might seem like a stupid question, but does the backup run if there's been no change to any files? Just a thought, if nothing's changed, it might detect that and not run.

 

@Brink has created many very useful tutorials for tenforums Windows 10 Tutorials

This may answer your question https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...-a.html?filter[1]=Backup Restore

Scroll to the bottom of the tutorial to see related tutorials, the tutorials are all like that with related tutorials at the bottom of the one you're looking at. Very helpful, we can thank Brink, and many of the knowledgeable users here for creating, and contributing to them.

 

I have been using File History for about 3 years with Windows 8.1/10. Mine is set to 12 hours with the intention of a daily backup.
Occasionally when I look it has not done anything for several days, much the same as what you are seeing. However, this is not new, it always was the case.

I attribute this to there being no file changes and being a low priority background task, or it caching a small number of changes and doing it later (or by a user doing the Run Now option).

I always manually save versions anyway when required for my own peace of mind.

 

I find File History (FH) stops updating for no particular reason. I reset it as follows:

• Stop FH
• Delete FH config files at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Configuration
• Restart FH and choose to use the same backup drive as before

 

Hey mate, unfortunately no, that's not how it should work. File History should make a backup on schedule, even if no changes have been made. If no changes have been made, the backup should only take a few seconds, but it should update the timestamp to show that it has done a backup, i.e. "last successful backup 27th of December @ 3:30PM". The issue i'm facing is that it will stop backing up for several days.

Sometimes i might find that it has randomly backed up at 6PM, but then it won't do anything for the rest of the night. It *should* be backing up hourly.

This is not how File History should work. If no changes have been made, it should still do a backup (even if that backup saves nothing), and the timestamp should update to reflect that.

In any case, like i mentioned in my first post, i tried to restore a file on my desktop and found that it wasn't there, because FH had not been backing up for several days.

Thanks, i've given this a try, will report back.

 

OK after extensive testing i am unable to figure out any pattern for this issue.

First up, the last manual backup i completed was at 11:30AM on December 29th.

At 6:30PM on the 29th it backed up automatically (why did it randomly wait 7 hours?).

Today is the 3rd of January and it has not backed up since December 29th, 6:30PM.

If i manually back up, it works fine.

 

Seems W10 has more than it's share of little non service affecting annoyances like this, there was a post at the bottom of this thread that was marked solved. In it @dalchina responded with a couple links in this thread On Windows 10 when does file history run? you might look at them to see if they maybe answer your questions.

 

No solution.

I ended up deleting my entire backup drive, removing the backup drive from File History, then starting fresh...

I did an initial backup at 12AM, then i checked back at 6am and noticed that it backed up at 1am, 2am, 3am.. all the way to 6am. So i shut down my computer. Finally i thought it was fixed.

Got home tonight at 10PM, turned on my computer, it's now 11:15PM and the last backup was at 6am.

So after a shut down it decided to stop automatically backing up again.

Getting sick and tired of this, considering just changing to another piece of software to handle my backups. Acronis or something.

 

Like I said, File History is 'flaky'. I would use Macrium Free rather than Acronis software since I had problems with Acronis in the past.

 

What problems did you have exactly?

I used to use Acronis in the past and was quite happy with it. I'm currently running the Acronis 2017 30 day trial and have set it up to do incremental backups every 1 hour. Will test this for a month and see how i go.

I used to use EaseUS but they have an awful activation strategy. After formatting my computer it refused to activate, and after contacting support and unlocking my key, the program would routinely lock out again and fail activation, despite paying full price for the software.

 

I last used Acronis backup software 2 years ago. The version I used installed low level disk drivers / filters which were not uninstalled and proved very difficult to remove.