Windows 8 File History backup creates duplicates

Anonymous
2013-02-05T16:18:46+00:00

I have run the Windows 8 file history since I installed W8 last October and each time I run it I get another duplicate set of documents, photos, video's, everything. After I accumulate 5-6 copies that amount to 45gb of space on my extended hard drive I delete the file history file and start over.

I'm using Windows 8 on a laptop and therefore do not have the HDD connected all the time. I run backups occasionally and whenever I run it all files are duplicated over and over again. By running it occasionally I mean sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. I've made all sorts of modifications but nothing works.

This is not a new problem and there are several complaints to Microsoft regarding people with this problem so I thought I'd ask the question on this forum.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/14cedd95-b3b0-4830-be00-da793dda9e27/

My main question is, is there a different backup / restore application that will work besides the W8 File History? Does the old backup from Windows 7 still work?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-11-17T20:11:32+00:00

    So, here is what worked for me :

    I ran across the duplicate files issues when selecting a Synology NAS drive by choosing the network location drive in file history advanced settings.

    I canceled everything and deleted all backed up data.

    Then, I mounted the Synology shared folder as a mapped drive in Windows with Synology Assistant.

    Finally, I restarted file history by selecting the Windows letter of the mapped drive as destination (not the networked drive - although pointing to the same device, of course).

    All by magic, file history started to work normally (no more duplicates, and even the excluded directories seem to remain exluded).

    Now let's hope that any temporary disconnection of the mapped drive will not mess my file history again... After a week, it's still stable.

    If it may help anyone...that's great !

    Michel

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-17T20:31:28+00:00

    That's about what I did. Disconnected the drive, deleted all the files, and added the drive back. I haven't had any issues for a couple of months.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T16:18:37+00:00

    I have the same issue, even on Win 10 with an mapped drive by drive letter from an WD NAS.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-09-22T04:19:32+00:00

    Has this been resolved yet? I am experiencing this problem with windows 10 pro. Seems to run full backups over and over again until the hard drive is full. Results in many duplicate versions of the same exact file.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-09-22T09:10:33+00:00

    Has this been resolved yet? I am experiencing this problem with windows 10 pro. Seems to run full backups over and over again until the hard drive is full. Results in many duplicate versions of the same exact file.

    From my experience this happens when the original file attributes can't be written or differs to the backup target: I was doing backups to a ntfs drive with compression enabled but since source files where not compressed they were getting duplicated.

    I've noticed this prior to anniversary updated and did not try using a network drive as a backup target, i've not tried other scenarios as file history is now working for me.

    btw: i own a synology nas and I created an iscsi target for file history, doing so allows me to hard limit backup space.

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