backup File History not starts automatically

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The tutorials here on File History don't seem to make reference to the task.

and this is a thing... If there was Task scheduled it was possible to set it by hour. But this heck doesn't have it.
So we never know when it will start. So, by logic put it on every 12 hours should run it every 12 hours from last one manual or automatic.
But my problem that it simply not starts automatically. Kind of beginner programmer forgot lost himself when started to create something good.
Also, Backup and Restore (Windows 7) utility is in 1903 and it should do the job and sure has task scheduler by time.
It make backups in zip... I guess File History has really nice capabilities but missing basic needs + simply buggy, without any support or explanation. So all bla-bla documents are not so useful.
Still hope somebody can suggest some registry "push".

Thanks for pointing me to an appropriate thread...
basically, there is no solution... all what a person tells is: it's a shame...

What is informative that he provides a link to the discussion of Duplicate backups.

I checked it, the tread lasts for few years and this is one of the end replies:

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This is a bug. It was reported on 13 October 2012 in Windows 8.1.
Today it is 7 July 2016 - almost 4 years later - and this bug still persists in Windows 10.
This bug essentially makes File History useless - because it consumes sufficiently huge amounts of disk space that no one can actually use it.
So what is the reason that Microsoft is not fixing this? Is it a careless attitude, rank disrspect for its user base, technical inability or simply unprofessionalism of the worst kind?
Come on Microsoft - we know you are capable of better support than this.


Thursday, July 7, 2016 7:25 PM
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There are couple of more recent complaints...

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In my case a cannot take a chance and set something in Triggers tab of File History schedule.
I have 20 GB of data daily. So if this heck will start to duplicate the result will be simply terrible.

And I guess it's for a reason that currently set for "every 12 hours" is not reflected under triggers...

Brief people going "crazy" about this. Here is the link from your suggested one:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/14cedd95-b3b0-4830-be00-da793dda9e27/windows-8-file-history-excessive-backup-excessively-saving-copies-of-files-photos-videos?forum=w8itprogeneral


Anyway, I really appreciate your reaction to help. It really gave a full info of a BAD situation.
I guess I have no choice and just create a case with MS (don't think it will help).

Or do it manually once a week. It is a bit complex solution. And File History Backup could really help if it was working.

Thanks again.

AS I have used FH in the past (and have a couple of less-literate PC-using friends relying on it, after I set it up for them), so I thought I'd check again. I just enabled it, set to update every 10 minutes (the mimimum interval) and waited - it runs automatically at the start. When it had finished I tweaked a couple of files, and (roughly) 10 minutes later the backups appeared:

At 18:44 it copied the revised .txt file, and at 18:54 the .xlsx file. So it seems to be working for me. I then had a look in Task Scheduler, and while there was a task under MS>Windows>FileHistory, it had no triggers defined, and seems to be a place-holder. So something else is triggering it. Nothing of interest appears in the 'standard' event viewer logs.

I suggest you set it to a short period and monitor it, perhaps deliberately tweaking a couple of files as I did to get some response.

Note that I did a search for ' where does FH save its schedule', and did not find any answers, but found this which sheds some light - FH will quietly save its backups in a cache (somewhere), and write to the backup device when it is available.

NB: FH can be mysteriously restrictive on which drives it will allow you to use, I haven't bottomed that out yet, and it automatically defaults to the full set of folders it thinks you want preserved, and has to be stopped to allow you to delete the unwanted ones - leaving redundant partially backed-up files in its store. It is not perfect!

NBB: those links to problems of redundant duplication are at least 3 years old, and the original article (W7/8) is 7 years old)!

hth, Martin

Hi Martin, thanks for your detailed post.

I changed 12 hours to every 20 min., then to every 10 min. The result is the same as when it was on 24 hours and 12 hours.
No new data was backed up.

Sure when click Backup Now. It works fine.

It is clear that the issue sits inside the program. There is no problem with destination (mapped drive), as manual Backup works.

The workstation is the "beast" resources wise. W10 build is 1903.
What are W10 you have success on?

So, even you say that the blog I refer to is dated it's still absolutely valid from my point of view.
The bad that there are no traces for monitoring the problem. MS not acknowledge the problem for basic modern OS.

I am using this File History instead of VEEAM agent for moving the data from physical machine to VEEAM server local storage and then backing it up to tape using VEEAM.

I am on 1909 (18363.476) as of a few days ago, but it worked on earlier vns. Unless you have good reason not to, update to 1909 if its available (it doesn't seem to install much, I think it mainly 'turns on' features that are already installed). I agree that it is almost impossible to fault-find with FH.

When I last had trouble (June 2018) with being unable to select an internal drive, I found a ref somewhere (I have no link) to turning off FH, then clearing the configuration files in C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory (clear everything in that folder), then restarting. Worth a try?

Miracle happened :)…
Yesterday, Dec 2 I left the setting on 10 min... and checked it after new data was added... it was staying on 20 min for a weekend.
As I mentioned in previous post without positive result.
I was intended to create a case with MS...

But this morning wanted to click Backup Now in order to add yesterday's data.
What I found amazed me :) (see screenshot).
I found that last backup was performed yesterday night at 21:51.
I checked the time of last file creation on local drive. It is 18:39.

I don't care about what happened and why the time of last backup is 21:51.
Yesterday's data was 11GB. On 1 Gb connection it takes some 10-15 min.

Ideally, I wanted that daily data will be copied after hours. So 12h could be a good solution, but it didn't work.

So, if it started to work, I will "pray" on it... Finally, the workstation is a monster. The connection is 1Gb. And I think that shadow copy and etc will correctly maintain a backup even in case that some big chunks of data will be written to disk simultaneously.

Will monitor for a week... If users will not complain about some delays during working hours, I can count the problem as solved,
with "a little help of my friends" (from tenforums.com).

I prefer to not go for 1909 for next 6 month.

Thanks Martin for your time.