Buzz
Starting from Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a utility called “File History”. Its features include synchronizing designated data on the operating system with external storage devices such as USB drives, portable hard drives, memory cards, etc. This facilitates backup and recovery of deleted files due to accidental deletion or virus attacks.
Guide to Enable Real-Time Backup Feature on Windows 8
Preparation:
- A USB drive or external HDD (with sufficient storage space, preferably 8 GB or more)
- A computer running Windows 8/8.1
Step 1: Firstly, plug the USB into your computer (By default, the program will automatically sync folders Contacts, Desktop, Favorites, Documents, Music, Pictures, Video. The USB capacity must be large enough to store these folders, depending on the number of files copied into these folders for us to choose the appropriate USB).
- Go to Control Panel, select File History.
Step 2: The program will check and list any peripheral storage devices currently connected to the computer. In this case, it's the Removable Disk (G) with a capacity of 7.26GB.
- Select Turn on to enable File History mode.
- Upon successful activation, a window like the one below will appear.
Step 3: The main interface consists of various functions.
- Recover personal files: Used to select which folders, files need to be restored in case of incidents. Click to choose files, folders in the window, then select the curved arrow. If no files or folders are selected, the program will restore all files, folders.
- Choose drive: Lists available storage devices on the computer. Additionally, we can add network storage drives by selecting Add network location.
Select network storage drives, folders, then choose Select Folder
- Exclude folder: We can exclude certain folders from real-time backup by clicking Add.
Select the folders you want to exclude in the (1) area, then choose Select Folder (2). For example, in this case, we select the Music folder.
Step 4: Select Save changes to finish.
- In the Advanced settings section:
+ Save copies of files: Automatically save files after a certain interval. For example, every 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 day,…
+ Size of offline cache: Determine how much disk cache to use for this process: 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%.
+ Keep saved versions: Specify how long to keep these backup copies. For example, 1 month, 3 months,…
- Once the setup is complete, if you want to restore files or folders, you can go to Restore personal files to recover them.
Direct Practice with a Simple Example
+ Suppose in the Music folder, there's a file image.png.
+ And in the Documents folder, there's also a file image.png.
Suppose we've added the Music folder to Exclude folder above (meaning we've chosen not to back up the Music folder in real-time). Now let's delete image.png from both Documents and Music.
Then we select Restore personal files on the main screen.
Here, we choose the green Restore icon.
The result is that the image.png file in the Documents folder has been restored, while the image.png file in the Music folder hasn't been restored.
- Note
- File History is a convenient utility; however, the program only saves and restores information from the program's default 7 folders, lacking the capability to restore system files.
