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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:12 am 
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Or at least File History is not working as advertised, as I've encountered the two significant problems discussed below. Maybe it's just me, so I would appreciate input from other File History users.

(1) By default, File History should back up all the folders in your User folder. To add or remove folders going to File History, you can click on "More Options" under the on/off slider and scroll down to "Back up these folders." Even though I remove folders I don't want backed up, they reappear on the list and are then backed up against my wishes. I have not tried to Exclude a folder, because it's much easier to Remove it from the default back up list.

(2) The much more serious problem I encountered is a repeat of any photos that I save to my 'Users>BB>Pictures>Trail Camera' folder. For example, I added some trail camera photos last night to this folder on my C drive, set File History to backup every 3 hours, and this morning I had 4 copies of EVERY photo in this folder backed up to File History. So whereas my original folder on my C drive contains 23 GB of trail camera photos, the corresponding File History backup folder contains 92 GB of photos!

As a test, last night I also created both a Word document and a Lotus spreadsheet. This morning, as it should be, I only had one copy of each backed up to the corresponding File History backup folder.

I have no idea why File History is treating my photos any differently than my documents and spreadsheets. I would appreciate any help or education. I had high-hopes of using File History as a data file backup, but it is exhibiting real estate consumption that I can ill-afford. :o

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:53 am 
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I am continuing to research this problem of duplicate File History backups. Although I don't know how to fix it, I did run across what appears to be a reasonable explanation.....this came from a user who's File History backup quickly went from 60,000 files to 240,000 files before he turned off File History.

The essence of the explanation was as follow......since the filename on the backup is altered by appending a timestamp, any subsequent run of File History compares the original filename with the backup and doesn't recognize that it's the same file. So it backs it up again with the new timestamp.

Evidently the two problems reported in my previous post are not unique to me. If you Google something like "why does Win 10 File History duplicate files", you will discover a boatload of similar complaints expressed on the Microsoft Community bulletin boards. Supposedly, someone heard that Microsoft is aware of the problem and that a fix is forthcoming. :rofl2:

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:59 am 
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You need to use the Exclude folders link. It works.

File History is what it says. It keeps versions of your files - history. So you will get many copies of many files. You can clean up versions and only keep the most recent, or you can delete earlier than a specified time. Go to Advanced Settings, and over on the right you see the choice for setting how often File History should run, and how long it should keep versions. You should probably change that from forever to some smaller time. ;)

Just under that is a link to clean up versions. I'd like to you do the cleanup and only save the most recent version, and then take a look in Windows Explorer and see what the situation is with your photos at that point. That might handle it, or there may be some other situation going on.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 12:05 pm 
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Yes, Jay, a change in the metadata of a file will cause File History to see it as a new version of the file. Since File History's purpose is to keep versions of your files as they change (so you can go back to a previous version if you wish - this was called Previous Versions in Windows 7), it is doing what it is supposed to do. There is a design flaw as you note, and I hope Microsoft can figure it out.

As a note, SyncToy had the same problem here until I told it not to check file contents on backups. Whenever I played music, it changed the metadata and I got a new file copy.

Another note - it is better have a much larger backup drive. Ideally, you will want to keep several versions of files, and you will want to keep multiple system images. You can do images on a different drive, or multiple drives - but File History is tied to one drive.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:43 pm 
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Patty, thanks for the responses. While I ponder your explanations of why File History left 4 copies of unchanged files, I wondering where Jay's post is that you are answering. Or maybe you all are caring on a private conversation? I'm curious as to what this design flaw is that Jay mentions and you agree with?

BTW, my File History backup drive is a 2TB external drive, and File History filled up almost 1/3 of it overnight in 4 backups at 3 hour intervals.

I will go away and study my File History results per you suggestions and let you know what I find out.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:01 pm 
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How very odd - re Jay's post. Perhaps he deleted it for some reason. Let's see what he has to say.

The design flaw is considering changed metadata for a file as a changed file. Metadata is data that is attached to the file, such as creation date, modification date; in photos it would include camera settings, in music it might include when it was played, etc. Certain programs would add their own metadata to a file; for instance Zune might add when some music track is marked as a favorite, or how often you play a certain piece of music.

Of course there may be good reasons to consider a change in metadata to be a change in the file - so I don't see how they can eliminate this completely. As far as 4 backups overnight, where you are obviously not changing anything - I don't know the reason for that, though I suspect there is one. Computers don't just do things willy-nilly, generally speaking. But let's see how you do after trying my suggestions above.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 3:01 pm 
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[quote="MacDuffie"]You need to use the Exclude folders link. It works.
OK, but the much-easier Remove function should work also, else why is it offered?

File History is what it says. It keeps versions of your files - history. So you will get many copies of many files. You can clean up versions and only keep the most recent, or you can delete earlier than a specified time. Go to Advanced Settings, and over on the right you see the choice for setting how often File History should run, and how long it should keep versions. You should probably change that from forever to some smaller time. ;)
OK, I will change to one month.

Just under that is a link to clean up versions. I'd like to you do the cleanup and only save the most recent version, and then take a look in Windows Explorer and see what the situation is with your photos at that point. That might handle it, or there may be some other situation going on.
OK, I did what you suggested and all 10,936 of my photos were deleted from my File History backup drive. That didn't surprise me, because there were no changes involved.......File History simply saved each of my 2734 photos four times overnight when I ran it at three hour intervals.

I repeat.....I did not change any file last night when I ran my test. I created 8 new photo files, 2 new document files, and 1 new spreadsheet file. Nothing was changed.....I just added new files.

It's important to note that ONLY my photo files were duplicated.....all 8 of the new ones and all 2,726 of my old ones. My document and spreadsheet files were not duplicated.

This is all very disturbing to me because my trail camera photos & videos are my primary data files that I want to save in a File History backup.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 3:11 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
How very odd - re Jay's post. Perhaps he deleted it for some reason. Let's see what he has to say.

The design flaw is considering changed metadata for a file as a changed file. Metadata is data that is attached to the file, such as creation date, modification date; in photos it would include camera settings, in music it might include when it was played, etc. Certain programs would add their own metadata to a file; for instance Zune might add when some music track is marked as a favorite, or how often you play a certain piece of music.

Of course there may be good reasons to consider a change in metadata to be a change in the file - so I don't see how they can eliminate this completely. As far as 4 backups overnight, where you are obviously not changing anything - I don't know the reason for that, though I suspect there is one. Computers don't just do things willy-nilly, generally speaking. But let's see how you do after trying my suggestions above.

OK, as posted above, I did as you suggested and File History deleted ALL my photos. This didn't surprise me because nothing had changed with my photos. If there is a change in metadata causing this problem, it must be the time stamp that Windows affixes to each photo file, because I didn't change anything. Right now, I am very disappointed in File History.....thank goodness for SyncToy.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 3:22 pm 
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Patty, I ran across this proposed solution on the internet. Does it make sense to you:

Duplicate files are generated by the task File History (maintenance mode) which can be disabled in the Task Scheduler under File History. Unless this task is disabled, it is run by the Action Center task Automatic Maintenance and duplicates all files in the Music, Pictures, and Video folders to your File History drive.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 6:53 pm 
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I never made a post in this thread. I think that Patty just typed Jay instead of BB by mistake. :mrgreen: If you will notice the replacement of 'Jay' with 'BB' makes perfect sense as to the context of the post which is in relation to the meta data change causing the duplicates.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 10:24 am 
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jaylach wrote:
I never made a post in this thread. I think that Patty just typed Jay instead of BB by mistake. :mrgreen:

Yeah, something like that. ;)

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 10:27 am 
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Bb, where do you see the "Remove" function. I am not seeing it.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 3:34 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
Bb, where do you see the "Remove" function. I am not seeing it.

Patty, sorry for the delay.....been to my 3-month doctor checkup.

When you go to the list of folders to be backed up, left click on any one of them and the Remove function will pop up for that folder. Same thing happens when you go to the list of folders to be excluded.

However, it doesn't do any good to remove a folder, because Windows does not retain the setting.......next time File History runs, the folder will reappear. Another design flaw IMHO.

Now to digress. Recall that (see above posting) when I performed the cleanup and selected to save only the most recent files, File History erased all 10,396 photos from my backup drive (2734 actual photos saved 4 times although there were no changes involved).

Well, I stewed over that for a few hours and then decided to re-run File History through the night and all morning, at 3 hour backup intervals. And during this period, there were absolutely no changes to any data file in any of the folders to be backed up.

This time, File History appears to have run correctly......the contents of my backup drive folders stayed absolutely the same, with no files duplicated. This was to be expected since there were no file changes. I have no idea why it decided to run correctly this time, but I am happy.

Tonight I will put it to another test by adding both new files and changed files. I will let you know what happens.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 3:51 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
As a note, SyncToy had the same problem here until I told it not to check file contents on backups. Whenever I played music, it changed the metadata and I got a new file copy.

Patty, I need to ask you about this statement made in an earlier post....especially since you are the one who introduced me to SyncToy. :bow7:

If ST doesn't check file contents, then will it not backup a file wherein a content change was actually made? Here is my specific situation. I want to develop a stock investment spreadsheet with weekly rows and stock name columns. Each week I want to go into that spreadsheet and enter stock values for that week. Then I want to save the file back to my spreadsheet folder under the same name.

In my case the file name will stay the same, but the contents will have changed. Will ST not backup this file if I tell it to not check contents?

Thanks for helping me understand......... :?

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:31 pm 
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"When you go to the list of folders to be backed up, left click on any one of them and the Remove function will pop up for that folder. Same thing happens when you go to the list of folders to be excluded."

BB, we are obviously not looking at the same interface at all. I see no list of folders to be backed up. Where are you seeing this and how did you get there. Start from the Start menu, please. We are talking about Windows 10 File History, right?

This is what mine looks like:


Attachments:
File History screen clip.png
File History screen clip.png [ 19.62 KiB | Viewed 23579 times ]

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:36 pm 
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OK, I'm not exactly sure what File History was up to on its initial run. Is there any way that you actually have multiple copies of your photos on your hard drive?

I am certain that File History did exactly what it was supposed to do. Especially since after its initial run it is behaving as expected. I just can't fathom why that would include 4 copies of all of your photos!

As for your question about SyncToy, I changed the option to check file contents only on my Music files. Those never change, except for metadata and I was tired of getting huge numbers of these files being overwritten whenever I ran SyncToy. I didn't do that with any other file types.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:50 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
"When you go to the list of folders to be backed up, left click on any one of them and the Remove function will pop up for that folder. Same thing happens when you go to the list of folders to be excluded."

BB, we are obviously not looking at the same interface at all. I see no list of folders to be backed up. Where are you seeing this and how did you get there. Start from the Start menu, please. We are talking about Windows 10 File History, right?

This is what mine looks like:

Patty, unfortunately you can't get to 'Folders to Backup' that way....another design flaw. Here's what you have to do:
Start>Settings>Update & Security>Backup>More Options (under On/Of)
Then you will see what I show below:
Attachment:
buFolders.JPG
buFolders.JPG [ 55.51 KiB | Viewed 23579 times ]

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:55 pm 
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Patty, I should have also shown you this, which I got by right clicking on that folder.
Attachment:
buFolders2.JPG
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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 6:09 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
OK, I'm not exactly sure what File History was up to on its initial run. Is there any way that you actually have multiple copies of your photos on your hard drive?
Not on my hard drive, especially in the same folder. I do have multiple copies on other external drives.
I am certain that File History did exactly what it was supposed to do. Especially since after its initial run it is behaving as expected. I just can't fathom why that would include 4 copies of all of your photos!
You certainly have more confidence in File History than I do. I guess you can call me "me of little faith", lol.

Patty, I did extensive research on the internet about this duplicate file issue. There are many other users who experience the same thing.....backup drives quickly filling up with duplicate files. In case you are interested in reading more, go here:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 18a?auth=1

As for your question about SyncToy, I changed the option to check file contents only on my Music files. Those never change, except for metadata and I was tired of getting huge numbers of these files being overwritten whenever I ran SyncToy. I didn't do that with any other file types.
OK, I am confused. For your Music files, did you tell SyncToy to 'check file contents', or 'not to check file contents'? And then what did you do for all your other files?

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 8:26 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
If ST doesn't check file contents, then will it not backup a file wherein a content change was actually made? Here is my specific situation. I want to develop a stock investment spreadsheet with weekly rows and stock name columns. Each week I want to go into that spreadsheet and enter stock values for that week. Then I want to save the file back to my spreadsheet folder under the same name.

In my case the file name will stay the same, but the contents will have changed. Will ST not backup this file if I tell it to not check contents?

Not only will the contents have changed, but it will have a newer time stamp and potentially a file size change.

-steve

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 9:04 pm 
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sboots wrote:
bbarry wrote:
If ST doesn't check file contents, then will it not backup a file wherein a content change was actually made? Here is my specific situation. I want to develop a stock investment spreadsheet with weekly rows and stock name columns. Each week I want to go into that spreadsheet and enter stock values for that week. Then I want to save the file back to my spreadsheet folder under the same name.

In my case the file name will stay the same, but the contents will have changed. Will ST not backup this file if I tell it to not check contents?

Not only will the contents have changed, but it will have a newer time stamp and potentially a file size change.

-steve

Thanks, Steve. I think you are saying that even if I tell ST to not check contents, it will still backup the file because the time stamp and possibly the file size have changed. Did I interpret that correctly?

What do you do for your files.....do you opt to check file contents or not?

The ST guides are not too clear on this option, at least not for me. They state that with this option selected, SyncToy will perform a SHA1 hash against all files. This gibberish goes right over my head and I quickly doze off, lol.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 9:09 pm 
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@ Patty - In one of my postings above, I meant to say that you LEFT click on a folder to get to the Remove option. I erroneously said right click, as I am often directionally challenged.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 2:22 pm 
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Going to take this in small doses. LOL

You said, "Patty, unfortunately you can't get to 'Folders to Backup' that way....another design flaw. Here's what you have to do:
Start>Settings>Update & Security>Backup>More Options (under On/Of)
Then you will see what I show below:"

OK, This is not a design flaw in the File History utility. File History showed up in Windows 8. It is essentially unchanged since then. It works perfectly. If there is any design flaw, it is with Windows 10 Settings app. (And there are many flaws in that. This app is very much a work in progress, as you will see when the Anniversary Update installs.)

Now, there are two parts to that. There is the Remove, as you say. But below all those folders, you will see the Exclude option. I have excluded my OneDrive local folders, as they are already backed up on OneDrive, and the contents is already elsewhere on my hard drive and don't need to be backed up twice. I used the File History Exclude link to exclude that folder. It shows up under Exclude in the Folder list in the Settings app.

I'm not sure why this is (again, a flaw in Settings), but it seems that NOT adding a folder to the list to be backed up (or removing it), is not sufficient. You must go down below the list of folders and add the folder you don't want backed up to the Exclude list.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 2:31 pm 
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You said:
"You certainly have more confidence in File History than I do. I guess you can call me "me of little faith", lol."

It is not so much that I have faith in File History (I do, but...), it is that I have utter and complete faith in computers. They ALWAYS and ONLY do exactly what they are told to do. If anything else occurs, it is 1) a hardware issue interfering with the computer's ability to function correctly (like a bad memory chip, for instance); or 2) bad programming.

I have used File History for years now. It performs flawlessly. Sometimes it is a matter of figuring out "what it has been told to do." We may not always comprehend what the programmer has told it to do. There are often things going on in the internals of the program that the programmer has to think about, but we don't have a clue about.

Having used numerous backup programs over the years, File History is far and away THE BEST backup program ever written. If it doesn't function exactly as you think it should, all I can say is that you're not a programmer. LOL Nor am I.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 2:37 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
OK, I am confused. For your Music files, did you tell SyncToy to 'check file contents', or 'not to check file contents'? And then what did you do for all your other files?

OK, sorry for the ambiguity. I told SyncToy NOT to check file contents on my Music Folder. The default setting is to check file contents (obviously, as nothing would backup otherwise). I left that default setting alone (to check file contents) on all other SyncToy backups.

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