Windows 10 Trouble Setting Up File History Backup: Need Alternatives for Frequent File Backups

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mike21

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I have activated the History backup facility in Settings, but all get is a folder FileHistory and various sub-folders, all empty. It is a facility I would like to use to cover new files etc. made since my last regular image backup - is there any other way of setting it up properly. If I cannot eventually get it to work is there a simple free program that does the same thing i.e. backing up every 15 minutes or so.
 
Solution
Morning Mike,
I eventually turned to google as I'd run out of ideas on how to fix your issue and came across this:

In the end I renamed the File History folder under "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows" and hey presto, things were available and links working again.
Click to expand...
This is taken from a thread regarding File History issues in the Microsoft forum. It's worth reading as some users have found solutions that may also help you?
The above quote is found on pge 2 Windows 10 Pro File History not working
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Thanks. Saving to the cloud is no good as my upload speed is only 0.65 Mbps. I still cannot get File History to work. I click add a folder under backup these folders and select desktop and documents to add - they should then appear under the heading but it remains empty of folders - not as illustrated in the help file. If I click to exclude folders and select one, that folder will appear below the exclude heading, as it should. I think that somehow the program has become corrupt.
 
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When you first set up File history it asks for another drive to back up to, do you actually have two drives attached? (or a USB drive)
 
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I have two drives additional to the ssd. I have tried file history on both with the same failed result.
 
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Mike would you mind running these scans just to make sure all is well with Windows?
File scans
Right click on the Start menu icon and from the revealed list choose 'admin command prompt'. Type:
sfc /scannow
press enter and await results

In the same command prompt and after the above scan has finished type:
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Press enter and await results (longer this time).

If the first scan found files it could not repair but the second scan is successful, run the first scan again using the same command prompt box and this time it should repair the files found.
 
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scannow found nothing, the other finished with the phrase "restore operation completed successfully nothing found".
 
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Morning Mike,
I eventually turned to google as I'd run out of ideas on how to fix your issue and came across this:

In the end I renamed the File History folder under "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows" and hey presto, things were available and links working again.
Click to expand...
This is taken from a thread regarding File History issues in the Microsoft forum. It's worth reading as some users have found solutions that may also help you?
The above quote is found on pge 2 Windows 10 Pro File History not working
 
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Solution
I have tried all of the solutions, including going via Control Panel rather than settings, but none work . I have at least managed to add the folders to back up - but still still an empty folder, in spite of the message that a backup is taking place. It seems to be a common un-solved problem. I will try to manually copy the documents folder at the end of each day, at least that should work. Thank you for all your attempts to resolve the problem.
 
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Well the File History directory should be on the drive you specified to store the data. You may also want to look for errors in the event viewer. They should be under 'Applications and Services Logs' > Microsoft > Windows > FileHistory-Core and FileHistory-Engine
 
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