Clearing File History Drive

I use File History, Windows 10 2004. Over time, the File History drive gets full. Often that's because some folders have got very large and I no longer need them in the backup. I want to remove these folders from the backup drive (not just stop them being backed up to the drive in the future). I cannot find anything in the many tutorials in TenForums that allows me to do this.

There is a tutorial explaining how to remove folders from being backed up (in the future). There's a tutorial that explains how how to purge backed up versions of files down to the latest versions. Neither of these gets rid of existing unwanted large backed up folders on the backup drive.

Essentially I want File History to start afresh by making a new baseline of all the folders I've selected for backup (before I do this I make a full backup of the File History drive in case I need to restore earlier file versions in the future).

The only way I've found to make a completely fresh backup is to ask File History to change to a new drive, saying I don't want to copy existing files to the new drive. I then format the original File History backup drive. Then I tell File History to use the original (now empty) backup drive, saying I don't want to copy any existing backup files. This forces File History to make a new backup of all the folders I've selected for backup.

This works. The size of the File History drive is now much smaller. But it seems a convoluted way to do something that should be provided from within File History.

Am I missing something?

Unfortunately that option doesn't help in the situation described. It just clears backed up folders to the latest versions. If a large folder has been included in the backup previously, the latest version is stll there after the purge. If that folder has filled most of the backup drive, the drive will remain nearly full after clearing to the latest versions.

Sounds like what you want is generally known as "mirroring"..............if a folder or file is deleted from the source, it will also be deleted from the destination the next time the backup is run.

That's a common feature of pretty much any ordinary file backup program that I've ever looked at.

I know nothing about File History. It may or may not be capable of doing what you want.

Are you wedded to it?

ignatzatsonic said:

Are you wedded to it?

I use Macrium Reflect for my main monthly backups monthly. If a file was deleted before the backup, it doesn't appear in the backup.

I find File History works well if I need to go back several versions of a file. If I've deleted a file, I normally expect File History to let me go back to the file if I want to. However if I want to restart File History from a baseline as files are now, I think there should be some way of doing this from within Firefox. However the workaround I mentioned does do this.

" Neither of these gets rid of existing unwanted large backed up folders on the backup drive."

You have to remove the Folder from the list, put it in the Exclude Folder list. Then depending on your Clean Up Versions settings it may take a while to empty that folder.

That does work, my downloads folder used to be in the list until excluded. I clean up versions older than 2 years so it did take it's time but it did eventually empty the Folder.

My overall copies schedule is Every 12 hours, Forever (default) so ~daily. More than that increases the versions and of course the disk space required.

You could use the setting "Until space is needed".

"The only way I've found to make a completely fresh backup is to ask File History to change to a new drive, saying I don't want to copy existing files to the new drive. I then format the original File History backup drive. Then I tell File History to use the original (now empty) backup drive, saying I don't want to copy any existing backup files. This forces File History to make a new backup of all the folders I've selected for backup."

That just defeats the purpose of using File History. Mine has been running for 6 years.

Overall it is not a suitable application for what you want to do.

Helmut said:

You have to remove the Folder from the list, put it in the Exclude Folder list. Then depending on your Clean Up Versions settings it may take a while to empty that folder.

That does work, my downloads folder used to be in the list until excluded. I clean up versions older than 2 years so it did take it's time but it did eventually empty the Folder.

My overall copies schedule is Every 12 hours, Forever (default) so ~daily. More than that increases the versions and of course the disk space required.

You could use the setting "Until space is needed".

Thanks. Next time I am running out of space I'll try these options.

I agree what I'm doing defeats the object of using File History. Actually I do keep a Macrium Reflect backup of the File History drive before I clear it, so if necessary I could get back an earlier version of a file even after I've emptied the File History drive, but it would be a hassle.


I will need to experiment, but what you suggest will be better than what I am currently doing when I start running out of space.

I use FH and am very pleased with it. I think the solution to your issue (removing large files from backup that you no longer want preserved - if I have got that right) is to simply locate the FH folder and (after making whatever other backup you feel you want) simply deleting the files concerned. For example, in the screen shot below:

suppose I decide that the video of Robin can go - just delete it and hey-presto - it is gone. It will of course get backed up on the next run of FH unless I remove it from the source folder, or deselect that folder from FH. Either will work.

The fact that FH saves files as plain, renamed items is, to me, its strength. Even if its indexing goes haywire, the files are still there, and can be recovered (and then renamed to remove the date info).

If you want to delete the lot, then just do that. I'm not sure which folder level would be best to make the cut, but you should leave the configuration folder alone - I suggest one of the partition letter folders (C & D in my case). I think FH will blindly continue until told otherwise - but it may get confused by the absence of previous backup files, which will be identified in some way in its Catalog files or the mysterious $0F foler. I will test that now, but only deleting poor old Robin. In my case the FH data is not critical, but I leave it running to see how well it is managing. I may be back with completely different instructions!

HTH, Martin

Well, FH coped Ok with that: after Robin was deleted from FH, he didn't get replaced when I ran FH again - presumably because FH had a record of his having been saved once already. So I tweaked the metadata of the video, (which changed its modified date), ran FH again, and this time Robin was copied. I don't know how much ofthis sort of messing about FH will cope with before it goes belly-up, but time will tell.

mngerhold said:

I don't know how much ofthis sort of messing about FH will cope with before it goes belly-up, but time will tell.

Yes, that's why I've not attempted to remove items this way. File History's index will be inconsistent once items are deleted manually. Probably OK, but who knows.

Anyway, thanks for your response, and everyone else who has replied.