Windows 10: "Your File History Drive Full", when it shouldn't be full at all

I can't seem to back up. I have a Western Digital External 8Tb drive, trying to back up 3Tb of data. The WD backup drive is a single partition NTFS.

I tried the WD backup software that came with the drive. When the drive was completely empty and new, the WD backup software said it couldn't back up because the drive was full. (???) I wrote to WD to ask how to fix the problem, and they wrote back something that was dismissive, so unintelligible it looked like his keyboard was broken, and completely unhelpful.

I tried Window's BackUp. It cranked away for a couple days, which seemed to be doing something.

Now, I get an error message every day saying "Your File History drive is full and cannot back up."

I checked my settings, and selected "keep saved versions until space is needed", so it SHOULD be clearing out space as necessary to keep the 3Tb up to date.

"Devices and Drives" says my WD ext HD only has 100Gb remaining, and is full. However, in that drive, I only see 3 files. MediaD.bin, for 1kb. A file folder with my computer's name, which "Properties" tells me is empty and 0 bytes. Then the FileHistory folder. Properties tells me my "FileHistory" folder is 3Tb. Great, that's what it SHOULD be if it did the first backup correctly.

Then why is my drive full and File History can't run? Somewhere in the File History settings, I found the option to delete all previous versions of files and only keep the most recent ones. So I did that. It threw away a bunch of stuff, but the drive now only says 160Gb remaining.

I have a 3Tb folder on an 8Tb drive. Why is my drive still saying it's "full", with only a sliver of space remaining? Why can't I do daily synch backups?

Every time File History tries to kick on and run a backup, it says "File History is saving copies of your files for the first time." Why is it not acknowledging the 3Tb that it supposedly copied over the actual first time? I can't seem to access that data, either.

Anyone have a clue what's going on, or how I can actually get a backup to function properly?

:)

 

"Your File History Drive Full", when it shouldn't be full at all

I can't seem to back up. I have a Western Digital External 8Tb drive, trying to back up 3Tb of
data. The WD backup drive is a single partition NTFS.

I tried the WD backup software that came with the drive. When the drive was completely empty and new, the WD backup software said it couldn't back up because the drive was full. (???) I wrote to WD to ask how
to fix the problem, and they wrote back something that was dismissive, so unintelligible it looked like his keyboard was broken, and completely unhelpful.

I tried Window's BackUp. It cranked away for a couple days, which seemed to be doing something.

Now, I get an error message every day saying "Your File History drive is full and cannot back up."

I checked my settings, and selected "keep saved versions until space is needed", so it SHOULD be clearing out space as necessary to keep the 3Tb up to date.

"Devices and Drives" says my WD ext HD only has 100Gb remaining, and is full. However, in that drive, I only see 3 files. MediaD.bin, for 1kb. A file folder with my computer's name, which "Properties" tells me is empty and 0 bytes. Then the FileHistory folder.
Properties tells me my "FileHistory" folder is 3Tb. Great, that's what it SHOULD be if it did the first backup correctly.

Then why is my drive full and File History can't run? Somewhere in the File History settings, I found the option to delete all previous versions of files and only keep the most recent ones. So I did that. It threw away a bunch of stuff, but the drive now only
says 160Gb remaining.

I have a 3Tb folder on an 8Tb drive. Why is my drive still saying it's "full", with only a sliver of space remaining? Why can't I do daily synch backups?

Every time File History tries to kick on and run a backup, it says "File History is saving copies of your files for the first time." Why is it not acknowledging the 3Tb that it supposedly copied over the actual
first time? I can't seem to access that data, either.

Anyone have a clue what's going on, or how I can actually get a backup to function properly?

 

"Your File History Drive Full", when it shouldn't be full at all

Hi David,

This may be due to the partitioning scheme that is currently running on your device. The Windows operating system normally supports storage devices up to 2 terabytes. To know more about the partition limits of storage devices and the role of GUID Partition
Table (GPT), you can check the post of Morgan Che [MSFT] on this

link.

Also, you can visit this
link to check the steps on how to initialize a storage device by using GPT.

Let us know should you need further assistance.

 

Hi, there are a couple of questions which are similar on the forum, and elsewhere on the net. Unfortunately they were not answered here.

If you just search the forum for File History, there are many results- perhaps more than one might hope.

So I'm not sure you'll get a useful answer, I'm afraid. (I don't use it myself, although I can understand why it would appeal).

I rely on disk imaging periodically, which File History would seem to complement.

Here's a post on resetting it:
How do I totally reset File History? - Solved - Windows 10 Forums

 

This may be due to the partitioning scheme that is currently running on your device. The Windows operating system normally supports storage devices up to 2 terabytes. To know more about the partition limits of storage devices and the role of GUID Partition Table (GPT), you can check the post of Morgan Che [MSFT] on this link.
Also, you can visit this link to check the steps on how to initialize a storage device by using GPT.

 

Good point- I missed that.

Maximum Volume Sizes