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I would like to use the File History feature of Windows 8 and so far it has been working fine. However, I have come across a scenario and need input on practicality for the following:
2. System crashes and new HDD required
4. Time to use File History for restore.... BUT
From what I understand you cannot "point" the new Windows 8 machine to use the external drive with previous File History. You will need to do a manual copy and paste from the external USB (by selecting the appropriate file in the File History directory on the USB drive).
The problem is, File History appends the date and time stamp, thus the file name changes. For example, MYDOC.DOC become MYDOC.DOC ((2013_04_04 18_27_46 UTC).
How do you remove the parenthesis from the file name when copying the file back to its original location or is File History not a "system restore" type utility. Whilst the parenthesis will not stop applications working (like WORD, OUTLOOK etc), it looks horrible and creates these long file names that is unwanted.
Thoughts/suggestions/comments?
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.
I just had to try to do this, and I was able to (on a new Win8 machine) point at the previous backup by clicking Drives and then selecting my backup drive (a network share in my case). Then I was able to check "I want to use a previous backup on this File History drive" and it displayed my existing backups on that drive. Finally, I was able to do the regular (if not very intuitive) restore files by clicking the settings icon in the upper right of File History.
Hope that helps,
Glenn Gailey
Go to File History. Make sure the file history is NOT turned on for the current Windows 8 or 8.1 installation. Then in the top left select "Select drive". You will be presented with your External Drive. Select this drive. There will be the message "This File History drive was previously used". You also will see the file history version from the backup of you previous Windows installation. If you started file history on the new (current) installation, you will also see that version with a more current date-time stamp. Select the previous version . There will be the message "Do you wan tot use this drive for File History again?" Select yes.
It will return to the maim file history screen. File history will now be turned on.
Select "Restore personal files"
You will see all the previous incremental backups from your previous Windows 8 installation. Just select what you would like to restore and then click the "Green" restore button.
Thanks, worked for me.
MrTaiwan,
I'm confused. It seemed PTJam explained the process of attaching an existing file history drive from the previous machine to the new machine and restoring the backed up files with no need to rename anything. Did it not work for you?
I'm replying because I'm curious if there is any problems in PTJams comment, since I'm trusting that it will work.
Eugene
Hi Eugene,
The solution PTJam described works. I just tried it.
atfive, you use the method PTJAm comment describes to do the restore and avoid the problem you had? I haven't tested it but nobody has said it doesn't work yet.
Quoting him:
Go to File History. Make sure the file history is NOT turned on for the current Windows 8 or 8.1 installation. Then in the top left select "Select drive". You will be presented with your External Drive. Select this drive. There will be the message "This File History drive was previously used". You also will see the file history version from the backup of you previous Windows installation. If you started file history on the new (current) installation, you will also see that version with a more current date-time stamp. Select the previous version . There will be the message "Do you wan tot use this drive for File History again?" Select yes.
It will return to the maim file history screen. File history will now be turned on.
Select "Restore personal files"
You will see all the previous incremental backups from your previous Windows 8 installation. Just select what you would like to restore and then click the "Green" restore button.
atfive - I feel your pain! I had the same issue, and I could not find any practical ways to mass-delete the extensions on the filenames. HOWEVER, if a proper restore from File History is executed, as opposed to the straight file copy that you seemed to have tried, then the files can be restored without the extension. As has been documented in this thread, FH seems not to support a restore to a new drive....UNLESS you trick it into thinking that your hew drive is actually the old drive (the crashed one). I am not going to remember how exactly I did that, but at a high level, how it works is to let File History run on your new drive, backing up to the same external USB drive that has your orginal FH backups. Go into the folders that hold the new File History backup, and you will find a couple of files that basically tell FH where to find the backup files. I think they are sort of logs or indexes. One is a text file that can be edited. What I think you need to do is both move trade these files with the corresponding ones on your original backup set, then also edit one of those files to change the directory structure so that it points to the original files. Something like that - if you dig in and find these files, open them up, you can probably figure it out.
Microsoft Support helped me figure this out. I had to pay the one-time fee, but I give them credit - they persisted through an escalation or two and got me on the right track. While THEY did not actually figure it out themselves, they tried doing this same thing, by moving these log/index files from old to new backup set. It was through watching what they were trying to do that I was able to dig into it a little more and got it right. I think the thing they neglected to figure out was the editing of one of the log files. I played with it myself, and eventually got the standard File History restore executed! No more long filenames.
Good Luck.
