Windows10 Version: 20H2
I would like to use Windows' file history feature but it doesn't recognize my SSD's as hard drives. My configuration is all SSDs (3) and this seems to appear to windows as my having no external drives on my system. Is there a workaround for this issue? (I have googled this ad naseum, to no avail). Thanks.
Jim
Have you tried using file history with an external drive?
It is designed to work with external/ network drives as saving the files on an internal drive sort of defeats the purpose of having a backup in case the original machine goes down.
Thanks for your help, but the issue is that Windows doesn't seem to treat SSDs as external drives. I have my OS drive (C), then two other drives, which, if they were disk drives would be treated as "external". So, I'm wondering if there is a registry hack or some other workaround that would trick Windows into treating my two other SSDs as external.
Welcome to Ten Forums
By design (in case of drive failure) File History won't let you chose the drive you are saving history for, or another partition on the same physical drive. It will allow you to save to an external drive or network share.
It is not clever enough to know that a network share is actually a local folder, drive or partition. So the workaround is to share your local drive, then connect file history to it through its share.
I tried your suggestion but couldn't get windows to see the share as an external drive. I must be missing a critical point, because the SSD drives are physical drives in the same manner as disk drives would be. Why does Windows treat them differently? Making this work is not critical as I do a backup daily, but it is convenient to have the utility available. Maybe Win11 will solve this. Here's hoping...
Jim
Well, it took a few attempts but my computer finally accepted my "network" drive and File History is now in progress. Many thanks for all your help. I never would have figured this out on my own. All the best, Jim
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