File history byta hård disk
File History in Windows is a powerful feature that allows you to automatically back up your files, ensuring your data is safe and recoverable. We will walk you through the steps to enable and use File History in Windows, helping you protect your important documents, photos, and more. When Windows 8 made its public debut in October , one of the new features it introduced to users was called File History.
Still available in both Windows 10 and 11, it can help you make sure you never lose an important file. Simply put, File History is a snapshot mechanism for all files that users store in the primary folders or directories associated with their user accounts. To some extent, this description is justified. It cannot, for example, back up entire drives. Nor can File History restore an entire Windows installation.
What File History does is take a snapshot of all files in the aforementioned folders and local OneDrive contents at regular intervals.
It provides an interface to review and retrieve previous versions of files from such snapshots. In the sections that follow I explain how to:. The good news here is that File History looks and behaves mostly the same across both versions. For consistency, all screen captures here come from Windows 11, but their Windows 10 counterparts are nearly identical, saving rounded corners on display windows.
Read on for the important details involved in turning File History on, so you can put it to work. By default, File History is turned off in both Windows 10 and It can be accessed via either Control Panel or the Settings app. To set up and configure File History, use Control Panel; the Settings entry point is best reserved for snapshot file retrieval and is covered later on. Note that if BitLocker is enabled for the primary Windows drive usually C: , you must also enable BitLocker To Go on external drives upon which you wish to capture encrypted library folders using File History.
If BitLocker is not turned on for the C: drive, you can skip this step. To configure File History via Control Panel, either type control panel into Windows search and click the item named File History , or simply type file history in Windows search. Turning on BitLocker for the target drive removes the warning in File History.
How to Set Up and Use File History Backup on Windows 11
The target drive is shown in the lower pane. Once you click the Turn on button at the lower right of the window, File History will be turned on for the target drive. If you want to choose a different target drive, you can first click the Select drive option shown at the middle left in Figure 1, and see a list of eligible target drives, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: You can select any option that appears in the select list as a File History target drive.
Select the drive you want to use for File History backups. Note: If you wish network drives to appear in the listing shown in Figure 2, you must first map them to the local system. You can click Add network location at the lower right to add such a drive. If network drive mappings are already defined, click Show all network locations. In the main File History window see Figure 1 , click Advanced settings in the left column. If a snapshot is made every hour, that means 24 snapshots a day.
In turn, that means GB on the low end, and GB nearly a terabyte on the high end. Every day! Figure 4: To prevent rapid disk consumption, snapshot at hour intervals and limit space consumption. By limiting snapshot frequency and instructing File History not to permit complete drive consumption, you can avoid potential future issues. In addition to ratcheting down the frequency and duration of snapshots, you can limit snapshot size by excluding certain folders from snapshot coverage.
Click Exclude folders in the left column of the main File History window see Figure 1 to drive this process. Figure 5 shows the folders I typically exclude. I discuss these choices — and their implications — in a bulleted list after Figure 5. You should do likewise. My trimming method cuts the size of each snapshot from over GB to a much more manageable 1. That leaves a LOT more room on the target drive for saving snapshots, too.
How to use File History in Windows 10 and 11
If at some point a file in one of the folders that File History backs up becomes damaged or goes missing, you can restore it via the Settings app. From the options that appear, select Restore your files with File History. Figure 7 shows a File History snapshot from which folders or files can be retrieved, which appears when you select the Restore your files… item shown in the preceding figure. This list of elements represents a trimmed-down snapshot after I excluded the folders mentioned above.
To highlight multiple items for restoration, hold the Ctrl key down while you click the items you want.