How to Select a File History Drive in Windows 10
File History was first introduced in Windows 8, and has been improved in Windows 10.
Before you can turn on and start using File History to back up your files, you need to first select where your backups are saved. You can select to save backups to an internal hard drive, externally connected drive (ex: USB drive), or you can save to a drive on a network.
If the drive selected as the backup location becomes unavailable, such as when a USB cable is disconnected or the network goes down for maintenance, File History will continue to do its job by saving the copies to a cache on the local drive in the %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Data folder. Once the backup location becomes available again, the cached contents are transferred to that location and removed from the local drive.
(No longer valid)You can also recommend your selected File History drive for other members of your homegroup to be able to select and save their File History on as well.
See also:
This tutorial will show you how to select a File History drive to either change or add a drive to where your files will be backed up at for your account in Windows 10.
Contents
- Option One: To Add File History Drive in Settings
- Option Two: To Change File History Drive in Settings
- Option Three: To Add or Change File History Drive in Control Panel
1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.
2 Click/tap on Backup on the left side, and click/tap on Add a drive on the right side. (see screenshot below)
If you see a setting to turn on or off Automatically back up my files instead, then you will need to use Option Two below to change the File History drive.
3 Select a drive you want File History to back up your files to. (see screenshots below)
If a network drive you want isn’t in the list of available drives, click/tap on the Show all network locations link. If the drive you want isn’t listed there either, then use Option Three, click/tap on the Add a network location link at step 3, and follow the instructions on the screen.
4 File History will now automatically be turned on, and back up your files to the selected drive. (see screenshot below)
5 You can now close Settings if you like.
1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.
2 Click/tap on Backup on the left side, and click/tap on the More options on the right side. (see screenshot below)
If you see Add a drive instead, then you will need to use Option One above to add a File History drive.
3 Click/tap on Stop using drive under Back up to a different drive. (see screenshot below)
4 Click/tap on the back arrow at the top left corner. (see screenshot below)
5 Go to Option One above to add a File History drive.
1 Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the File History icon.
2 Click/tap on the Select drive link on the left side. (see screenshot below)
3 Select a File History drive you want, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshots below)
If the selected drive was already used by File History, then you will also need to select an existing backup to save to.
If a network drive you want isn’t in the list of available drives, click/tap on the Show all network locations link. If the drive you want isn’t listed there either, then click/tap on the Add a network location link, and follow the instructions on the screen.
4 If the new selected drive was never used by File History and files backed up by File History were found on another drive, then click/tap on Yes or No to move your existing files to the new selected drive. (see screenshot below)
5 If the new selected drive was used by File History and doesn't have your most recent files backed up on it, click/tap on Yes or No to confirm to use this drive for File History. (see screenshot below)
If you click on Yes, then a new backup of your files will be created on the selected drive.
6 File History will now automatically be turned on, and back up your files to the selected drive. (see screenshot below)
7 You can now close the Control Panel if you like.
That's it,
Shawn Brink
Related Tutorials
- How to Reset File History to Default in Windows 10
- How to Turn On or Off File History in Windows 10
- How to Exclude Folders from File History in Windows 10
- How to Manually Create a File History Backup in Windows 10
- How to Add or Remove Folders to be Backed Up by File History in Windows 10
- How to Change how Often to Save File History in Windows 10
- How to Change how Long to Keep File History in Windows 10
- How to Restore Files or Folders using File History in Windows 10
- How to Delete Older Versions of File History in Windows 10
- How to Recommend File History Drive to Homegroup in Windows 10
- How to Add History to Context Menu in Windows 10
- How to Create File History shortcut in Windows 10