I'm going to start over. I turned off FH on The-Shop, then deleted the data for The-Shop from the LAN drive. At this point I think I need some pointers, what are your suggestions to continue?
BTW, thank you for your help.
I started to write instructions, realised I don't know how the old backup will appear when you try to access it from another PC, so have to test - back in a while...
...OK, just done some tests. It seems I inadvertently misled you when I said that the backup made on your second PC (call it PC#2, as I don't know what it is) would copy to a folder with that PC's name. I assumed that was what FH would do, as that is what it does when creating a backup from scratch. In fact it appears that, if one opens an existing backup (as you are trying to do, to be able to get at the old files), the data gest stored under the folder you select to append to. I just made a backup to a USB drive on a laptop, including 2 users, Lesley & mnger (me). I then plugged the USB drive into my main PC, started FH (which I had stopped), and selected the drive:
and also selected the 'Lesley' backup. I then got this warning:
as if I continue, I will lose the backups I had been making to another drive. This won't pop up on a PC that has not used FH previously. I can ignore it. So FH is now 'ON':
so I need to run it - until one does, I don't think one can restore anything , even though the Lesley files are already there. I now see that a restore from them might have been possible, but I didn't try it - oh well, next time.
<update> I have confirmed one can restore from this point.
When FH has completed, one can try a restore:
and what I am offered initially is the contents of that most recent backup, done on my main PC at 20:43:
but I can scroll left, to pick up:
Lesley's stuff. It is not obvious that this is L's stuff (I know it is, and have checked contents), the only clue would seem to be the backup date/time (in this case, 20:36). The actual folder structure on the USB drive is even more odd:
The top folder is 'Lesley', as that is what I chose to append to, the next level shows the PC that it was made on (TASF). Under that, the 'data' folder is where the data is (duh!). This shows the various drive letters backed up: C:\users\Lesley is the stuff from the TASF laptop, C:\users\mnger is some of what got appended when I ran FH the second time, on my main PC. Most of the data on my main PC is on D & E, so these got backed up also.
What you would be after would be the equivalent of the 'C:\users\Lesley' folder.
So it seems that FH does not preserve the names of the PCs it has backed up, as I imagined it would. In my next post (as this is getting long) I'll finish the list of actions I suggest you use to test this for yourself.
Stay tuned - Martin
..
Last edited by mngerhold; 03 Jan 2021 at 16:48.
To summarise the actions to check (as I did above) that existing FH data can be accessed on PC#2 in the event of failure of the original source on the-shop. To avoid confusion with any existing FH data, start from scratch:
(i) Ensure FH is OFF on the-shop
(ii) Clear any FH data from the LAN drive - you've done that.
(iii) Start FH on the-shop, select LAN drive, let it run to completion.
(iv) Confirm you can see some files in the FH folder on the LAN-drive.
(v) Turn FH off on the-shop (so it doesn't get in the way over the network).
(vi) Start another PC (call it PC#2), ensure FH is off.
(vii) Start FH on PC#2, select the LAN drive, it should find the existing FH data and ask if you want to use it (as per your post #7), select the The-Shop backup. Do not run FH (yet).
(viii) Select 'Restore personal files' and browse whatever you see. You can select a file, or whole folders, then press the green restore button at the bottom of the window - FH should restore the files, then open an explorer window so you can see what you've got.
There may be an efficient way to restore everything (select all folders ?).
hth, Martin
PS I bother with this because I think FH is one of the best things about W10, so don't want to see users giving up on it too soon. It may not suit all users, but I have set up several 'lazy' friends so all they have to do is plug in their USB drive every now and then - and even that seems to be too much to ask.
[QUOTE=rboppy;2121939]I'm going to start over. I turned off FH on The-Shop, then deleted the data for The-Shop from the LAN drive. At this point I think I need some pointers, what are your suggestions to continue?\Quote]
Miscommunication strikes again.
The-Shop (TS) is the spare computer, Jim Allen (JA) is a laptop that I use as a desktop.
From THE-SHOP (TS) Settings > Backup > More options > Restore from a current backup > [No file history found] > Configure File History settings > Select drive > Add network location > Ubuntu2 (my LAN folder) > Select Folder (Backups)
There is no Jim Allen listed, these are the files I want to restore to TS. rboppy is TS and Suzy (my wife) is SUZYS-SSD.
This is a screenshot of \UBUNTU2\Backups form Windows Explorer
I agree that FH is (or should be) one of the best things about W10, I've used it countless times to recover missing or older files, but until they make restoring a crashed computer, a lot easier than this I might look for something else.
I certainly appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this, I may look at it again tomorrow.
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