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

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-07-25T11:40:35+00:00

    Thanks for your reply but I have absolutely no idea what "I found that the output disk I was using was initialized to perform automatic file indexing.  I turned this off, and now File History does as expected" means.

    Can you explain? I kept the file history on an attached hard drive and every time I ran file history I would get another duplicate set of files created so I haven't run this application in months. I have no idea what steps to follow that will allow me to do what you describe.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-07-25T06:30:35+00:00

    I also had this problem.

    I found that the output disk I was using was initialized to perform automatic file indexing.  I turned this off, and now File History does as expected - only backs up changed files. 

    Hope this helps

    David

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-05-16T19:13:21+00:00

    I have the same issue :-(

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-04-21T20:36:36+00:00

    Hi, im having the same problem. I turned on file saving and it hasnt stopped saving duplicate files until my hard drive is full. Now all i get is warnings about having no disc space left. All i want to do is remove the duplicate files and documents and keep it turned off for ever.!

    When i follow your instructions on how to delete all the saved files, i can only get as far as,

    'a)' I can see 'Control Panel' when i click it there's no 'View All'

    So I Cant do all the following.

    c) Click on File Transfer. Click on Advance settings.

    d) Select the desired option from Keep saved Versions from the drop down menu. 

    You can clean up or delete the previous version as well. On the same page as mentioned above click on Clean up Versions. Select the appropriate option and delete the rest.

    Please help.

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-03-09T03:46:14+00:00

    It duplicated pics,   but not all.  So strange.  

    Thanks for reporting back.

    In my case, all the pictures are many months or even years old. Though I did not check super carefully in every subdirectory,  for those I checked every picture was duplicated.   Perhaps if there is greater variation in file dates, maybe newer ones that have recently been backed up are not duplicated (?). Just a guess that Maintenance tries to establish some kind of safe daily baseline state which quickly becomes a storage hog if not purged.  In any case, I agree it is so strange.  Microsoft needs to fix this bizarreness or explain their intent. 

    With File History (maintenance mode) disabled, I've been running hourly File History backups all day from two networked machines to a single external drive hanging off one of them.  No duplicates and it should be impossible for Maintenance to interfere.  Now switched to 6 hour intervals.

    BTW,  Control Panel > File History > Files last copied on date/time is often incorrect with respect to scheduled runs, while time stamps on the actual File History data files are accurate. To check activity I created a Custom View in Event Viewer, filtering to see all events for sources FileHistory-Core and FileHistory-Engine.

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