Question about File History usage

I was preparing to set up file history between my PC and a USB hard drive and before initiating the process, I went through the Bluetooth folder on the PC and dragged the photos and videos which were in there to their permanent storage place in my respective Photo and Video folders, organized by year, subject etc.

After the backup was finished I realized I had copy-dragged the photos, not move-dragged. So now I have duplicates. I deleted the duplicates from my PC Bluetooth folder and ran backup again, hoping the deletions would be mirrored on the USB drive. They weren't, so I would like to also delete them from the file history drive, which of course saved the Bluetooth folder full of files to the backup as well.

So my question is: if I directly alter the contents of the file history drive in any way will that affect the integrity of any future backups?

pjfarr said:

So my question is: if I directly alter the contents of the file history drive in any way will that affect the integrity of any future backups?

Probably, File History also keeps a database in its Configuration folder on your History drive.

Why not turn off File History, delete the current History folder, then set it up from scratch and make a new full backup?

That was going to be my last resort, as it took hours to do the initial backup.

Fwiw, when I used File History I found that restoring my C drive (doing an image restore unrelated to File History) 'lost' all the information relating to backed up items between the dates of the restore image and the current data (if that makes sense).

Ultimately it didn't matter because the history drive still had all the items and they were available to browse just like any other normal folder. As I recall you could just delete stuff, and it didn't confuse anything any more than was already confused by doing an image restore.

That led me to conclude that the database for the history items was actually located with Windows rather than elsewhere. That's how I found it to work anyway.

These days I abandon File History (partly after reading a couple of years ago that it was being dropped... but like so many things it never actually happened) and mainly because I found a better alternative included within AOMEI's Backup and Restore program.

Infrasonic said:

A third party utility like CCleaner (tools/duplicate finder) could probably be used to filter out duplicates.

That will not help with File History though. The whole point of File History is that it keeps versions (including files deleted on source).

I have manually deleted files from File History and while future backups work to restore I've had to do it manually not through the GUI.

The safest method is as mentioned in post 2 - delete it and start again.

pjfarr said:

That was going to be my last resort, as it took hours to do the initial backup.

I would just bite the bullet and let it run overnight. It will end up being cleaner.

Thanks all, for chiming in.
@Infrasonic
I used CCleaner to eliminate the duplicates on my PC, but trying it on the File History drive gave me a "no duplicates found" message. I know they're on there, so I assume it has something to do with how Windows organizes things within File History. Also, it would be nice if CCleaner had an option to eliminate all duplicates from a particular folder/path instead of having to go through the list and mark them for deletion individually.
@​Mooly , @lx07
I decided to forego File History and just back up with my usual app AllwaySync, which gives me the option of mirroring certain folders (i.e propagating deletions) on the fly. I just thought I'd try File History because of the versioning thing, but screw it.

I formatted the USB drive clean and then started anew with AllwaySync and it only took a few hours.

All is well now, thanks for your advice and opinions. I appreciate it!