windows 8 file history does not recognize my iomega hard drive

Anonymous
2012-11-05T21:02:44+00:00

I'm having problems with setting up file history to back up my files, as the program will not recognize my Iomega portable hard drive.

I keep getting this error message every time I try to back up the files.

File history does not recognise this drive!

It is shown ok in my computer list and I can drag and drop files into it ok.

Any ideas?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2012-12-17T02:47:50+00:00

Ok, I've now cracked the problem of File History not recognising my external USB expansion drive, even though the drive had worked initially and it was behaving normally in File Explorer. Here's how I did it - it worked for me on my PC - maybe it will work for others.

  1. Open File History and click Select Drive. Select a different drive than the one that is failing to be recognised. (If necessary add an extra internal HDD to your PC. If you have a laptop you could try adding an additional external USB drive to a different USB port - I haven't tried this.) Proceed to set up File History on the new drive. Then turn File History off on the new drive so that a whole lot of your files are not transferred there.
  2. Go to the external USB drive that wasn't being recognised, find the File History folder and rename it to "File History.old" or delete it.
  3. Go to your C:\Users\your user folder\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows, find the File History folder and rename it "File History.old" or delete it. 
  4. Re-open File History, click Select drive and select the original USB drive that was not being recognised. The drive should now set up normally and start operating. 
  5. Delete the File History folder on the spare drive used in procedure 1. above.

The above process is relevant to situations where people may have altered drive letters by adding or removing drives or moving the system between drives and because of this the File History configuration files are pointing at the wrong drive.

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Anonymous
2012-12-10T19:52:53+00:00

I  don't know if this will help anyone else, but I spent 3 hours two nights ago on the phone with the MIcrosoft "Answer Desk":   

http://answerdesk.microsoftstore.com/

I don't remember how I found them, but I'm glad I did.  It started as a chat session, but then the agent offered to remote my computer and he took it from there.  He did a ton of different things, and was also editing the registry, and updating driver files on my ext device.  But ultimately, what seemed to seal the deal was when he reassigned the name of my external device with a different drive name.  Apparently, my second device was carrying a different file name than the first drive I had connected.  He changed the drive name to be the same as the drive that File History kept looking and asking for, and voila...it worked.  He said it tricked the registry into thinking that it was getting the same device.  I'm not sure it was all as simple as that, but whatever he did worked.  He told me that since I had purchased a new computer with Win8, I was eligible for "warranty" service at no charge.  What a nice surprise that was.  So if you are also in that boat...having just gotten Win 8 or moved up to it, it might be worth a shot to bring up the Microsoft Answer Desk, and start a chat and see where it goes.  For me it was a Godsend, because my next option was to reinstall the operating system with my recovery disk, and I sure didn't want to go through all that.  Good luck all...there is hope if you can get to the right person!

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-12-13T08:30:48+00:00

    This seems to have worked though:-  I decided to give up on getting my external USB drive recognised by File History and instead chose to store the File History backup on an internal spare hard drive. This worked and the File History folder was set up on the  internal HDD. I then went back to File History setup and tried once more to set it up on the  external USB drive. This time it worked and a File History folder was set up successfully on the USB drive. That seemed like progress - at least the drive was now recognised. However, so far, no actual files have been backed up to the USB drive. When I click on 'Run now' it thinks for a few seconds says 'File history is saving you files for the first time' and then stops again. Progress of a sort.

    Rob

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-12-13T14:37:20+00:00

    Rob and others.  I am so sorry the drive letter change did not help.  Yes I do think there were other things involved in my fix.  I think I mentioned it took the tech almost three hours of remoting my computer and trying a lot of different things.  I do remember him also spending a lot of time trying to update the drivers on the external hd...in my case a brand new WD My Passport 2T.  I remember saying to him I would have thought that that brand new drive (just out) would have had the latest drivers, but he kept jacking with it.  When he checked it, I remember it saying it had the latest drivers already installed, but he still went to another site that Microsoft must use in situations like this (sorry, don't recall the name) and he downloaded stuff from there.

    I'm thinking that anyone using Windows 8 must have the same 90 day warranty as I do.  I really would encourage you to just call the answer desk.  My sense was that there are some quirks (understatement?) in Win8, but that Microsoft is willing and anxious to help people solve those with their answer desk.

    On the other hand, I can't imagine they are not monitoring this page and I'm surprised that none of them are jumping in here to offer suggestions.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-12-15T18:32:11+00:00

    I've been scouring the web for a solution to this problem for awhile and so far nobody has found an actual solution. I have a Western Digital My Book 1.3 Terrabyte USB drive which also is not being recognized as an external drive. I begin to wonder what MS calls "external". Does it have to be on another planet?

    One thing that was mentioned is that you cannot be using the drive folders in any Windows Libraries. I made sure I am not, but this makes no difference that I can find. File History still fails to recognize the external drive as an external drive, and yes I know how redundant that sounds but there is just no other way to say it.

    The only work around I can find is to just use a Network share. I have a Western Digital My Book World Edition which has a network connection built in. I set up a share point and configured File History to use that. It's a horrible solution because even with the 100 Megabyte Ethernet connectionthe backups will take longer than they would over USB.

    Hopefully someday Microsoft will come out with a patch to allow File History to recognize all external drives as actually being external. Or a much better solution would be to do what they used to do and choose any drive you want.

    The current situation is unacceptable.

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