Windows 8 File History backup creates duplicates

Hello Prana, not sure if this will work, yet, have Win 8.1 General, Spent the last 3 hours, between answers& techNet, & finally you may have the solution, Thank you.

******@gmail.com Graham Clark

I have a similar duplicates problem - it has stopped, but I still have old duplicates that I cannot clean. I'll explain further.

I plugged in my external drive and set up File History to use it. Before it had finished backing everything up I removed the drive, closed my laptop and went  home. I then used my laptop without the drive attached and when I got into work the next day I plugged in the drive again - it seems that at this point the backup started again from scratch creating a duplicate of all the files it had created the first time - unfortunately I again disconnected the hard drive before all files had backed up and when I connected it again I got a third duplicate. This time however the backup finished, since then I have had no duplicates. However the two previous duplicates cannot be removed by the "Clean up versions" tool.

It seems like if you interrupt the first backup, then Windows forgets it is there, meaning the backup starts again and the old files cannot be cleaned out.

I'm about to try to delete all the old duplicate files manually by searching for the date string and hopefully then I'll be done.

I'm almost definitely sure that the problem is caused by file permission changes. File permissions changes can be made manually from the 'security' tab of each file or folder, or by other applications or services.

HomeGroup creation changes the file attributes as it allows network users to read some files.

I'm not sure if other programs can make similar changes. Another user in this forum had Nero 2014 installed before the problem appeared.

Other backup applications have similar problems too. Norton's backup feature does the same thing when it detects file permission changes, but it replaces the whole backup instead of making duplicates. Still the same problem though.

On the other hand, Microsoft's SyncToy, a very simple file synchronization utility that can be used for backing up files, is unaffected from this issue. The only actual disadvantaged of the application is that you need to run the backup manually, there is no schedule or automatic option.

FIX THE PROBLEM!!!

THE PROBLEM REMAINS ON WINDOWS 10 PREVIEW!

It re-appeared after I disconnected and reconnected my external hard drive for a couple of days! Or probably after launching the 'Movies & TV' Microsoft App.

WHATEVER THE CAUSE IS, THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM!!

It cancels the functionality of 'History' since it forces us to remove old versions after re-writing everything twice and it also wears out the disk shortening its life and increasing the danger of data loss!!

I hadn't even noticed the 'clean up versions' option, so thanks for the heads up. But I have just run it and selected all but the latest one - and I'm sorry to say it failed to delete all but the latest one of files like MSNBC News (2015_07_26 14_23_39 UTC) in my Favourites :-( So I have now turned File History OFF and will rely on my synced backups to USB hard drives instead.

But it is diabolical that this problem has been around since File History started and that so many people have reported issues with duplicates - YET MICROSOFT HAS STILL NOT FIXED IT!!!!!