Windows 10 File History Not Backing Up Automatically

I've had Windows 10 file history enabled since i got Windows 10 on release.

It backs up every hour and has been working fine for over a year.

A few days ago i went to restore a file and noticed that the file was not in the backup. I checked my backup, and noticed that it had not been backing up for a few days.

I checked file history settings and its still set to back up every hour. If i manually back up, it works fine, but it does NOT automatically backup every hour.

I have tried turning file history off and on, but no resolve.

In the meantime i have been manually opening file history and backing up once a day, but obviously that isn't ideal.

Can anyone assist?

I have been using File History for about 3 years with Windows 8.1/10. Mine is set to 12 hours with the intention of a daily backup.
Occasionally when I look it has not done anything for several days, much the same as what you are seeing. However, this is not new, it always was the case.

I attribute this to there being no file changes and being a low priority background task, or it caching a small number of changes and doing it later (or by a user doing the Run Now option).

I always manually save versions anyway when required for my own peace of mind.

lumpycustard said:

I've had Windows 10 file history enabled since i got Windows 10 on release.

It backs up every hour and has been working fine for over a year.

A few days ago i went to restore a file and noticed that the file was not in the backup. I checked my backup, and noticed that it had not been backing up for a few days.

I checked file history settings and its still set to back up every hour. If i manually back up, it works fine, but it does NOT automatically backup every hour.

I have tried turning file history off and on, but no resolve.

In the meantime i have been manually opening file history and backing up once a day, but obviously that isn't ideal.

Can anyone assist?

I find File History (FH) stops updating for no particular reason. I reset it as follows:

• Stop FH
• Delete FH config files at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Configuration
• Restart FH and choose to use the same backup drive as before

CmmTch said:

I don't use that function to backup files, this might seem like a stupid question, but does the backup run if there's been no change to any files? Just a thought, if nothing's changed, it might detect that and not run.

Hey mate, unfortunately no, that's not how it should work. File History should make a backup on schedule, even if no changes have been made. If no changes have been made, the backup should only take a few seconds, but it should update the timestamp to show that it has done a backup, i.e. "last successful backup 27th of December @ 3:30PM". The issue i'm facing is that it will stop backing up for several days.

Sometimes i might find that it has randomly backed up at 6PM, but then it won't do anything for the rest of the night. It *should* be backing up hourly.

Helmut said:

I attribute this to there being no file changes and being a low priority background task, or it caching a small number of changes and doing it later (or by a user doing the Run Now option).

This is not how File History should work. If no changes have been made, it should still do a backup (even if that backup saves nothing), and the timestamp should update to reflect that.

In any case, like i mentioned in my first post, i tried to restore a file on my desktop and found that it wasn't there, because FH had not been backing up for several days.

Steve C said:

I find File History (FH) stops updating for no particular reason. I reset it as follows:

• Stop FH
• Delete FH config files at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Configuration
• Restart FH and choose to use the same backup drive as before

Thanks, i've given this a try, will report back.

OK after extensive testing i am unable to figure out any pattern for this issue.

First up, the last manual backup i completed was at 11:30AM on December 29th.

At 6:30PM on the 29th it backed up automatically (why did it randomly wait 7 hours?).

Today is the 3rd of January and it has not backed up since December 29th, 6:30PM.

If i manually back up, it works fine.

No solution.

I ended up deleting my entire backup drive, removing the backup drive from File History, then starting fresh...

I did an initial backup at 12AM, then i checked back at 6am and noticed that it backed up at 1am, 2am, 3am.. all the way to 6am. So i shut down my computer. Finally i thought it was fixed.

Got home tonight at 10PM, turned on my computer, it's now 11:15PM and the last backup was at 6am.

So after a shut down it decided to stop automatically backing up again.

Getting sick and tired of this, considering just changing to another piece of software to handle my backups. Acronis or something.

Like I said, File History is 'flaky'. I would use Macrium Free rather than Acronis software since I had problems with Acronis in the past.