File History Feature of Windows 8

File History feature of Windows 8  offers a novel way to protect personal files. File History replaces the Windows Backup and Restore and Previous Versions features on Windows 7.

File History is designed to help protect your data by periodically scanning the file system for changes to files in your Libraries and several other important folders under the user profile, such as Desktop, Favorites, and Contacts. This scan is done every hour, by default.

Every time one of your files changes, File History stores a copy of the file on a dedicated storage device that you selected when you set up File History. Over time this storage device will contain a history of changes made to your files.

Accessing Your File History

Any time you want to locate a file or folder from a specific point in time, open File History. The interface is designed to help you quickly find what you’re looking for and restore it with one click (or tap). The innovative restore app offers an engaging experience optimized for browsing, searching, previewing, and restoring files. Finding and restoring a version of a file created in the past is as easy as one click.

Configuration

File History is not enabled by default. You can enable File History from Control Panel.

When File History is turned on, the last copied date and time is displayed in the interface, as shown below.

You can also enable File History through Windows Explorer. To do this, open Windows Explorer and click the History button on the Home tab of the ribbon. From the window that opens, click the Turn on File History link, which opens the File History Control Panel.

Locations in the File History

File History saves changes to files in the following locations:

• Libraries
• Desktop
• Favorites
• Contacts
• SkyDrive folder: If you have the SkyDrive sync app installed, your local SkyDrive folder will be included in File History.

You can change the folders in scope for File History in two ways:

• Add: To add a folder, add it to a Library.
• Exclude: To exclude a folder, use the Exclude folders option on the left side of the File History interface.

Select the File History Target Drive

You can configure File History to make copies of your data onto either a hard disk or a network share. These options ensure that your data always exists on two physical drives. If one of those drives fails, you will still be able to recover the data from the other drive.

The steps to select a different drive are listed below:

1. Open File History in Control Panel.
2. Click Change drive in the Task Pane on the left.
3. All eligible local drives are shown in a list. The physical disk that Windows is installed on will not be eligible. This is true even if the disk is divided into multiple partitions.
4. Select your desired target drive and click OK.
5. You will see a dialog asking “Do you want to move your existing files, too?”

• Clicking Yes moves the existing copies created by File History to the new location you selected.
• Clicking No does not move your previous File History to the new location, but those previous copies will remain available as long as the drive they are on remains attached.

Configuration with a Network Share

To configure a network share to be used for file copies, you can do the following:

1. Open the File History Control Panel.
2. Click the Change drive link in the Task Pane on the left.
3. Click the Add network location button.

1. Browse to the network share where you wish to save your File History copies.
   1. Alternately you can type the UNC path directly in the Folder text field to bypass the browsing mechanism.
   2. If you are unable to access the UNC path directly, try appending .local to the server name. For example, instead of \\server try \\server.local.
   3. Click Select Folder.
2. You will see a dialog asking “Do you want to move your existing files, too?”

• Clicking Yes moves the existing copies created by File History to the new location you selected.
• Clicking No does not move your previous File History to the new location, but those previous copies will remain available as long as the drive they are on remains attached.

If you don’t have an externally attached hard drive, you will not be able to turn on File History by default. You can get around this by first configuring File History to use a network share using the Change drive option described above. After you do this, you will then be able to turn on File History. However, this is a two-step process. First, you must change to using a network share, and then you can turn on File History.

Recovering Files with File History

You can access the interface for recovering files with File History using a few different methods. In Windows Explorer you can select the History button on the Home tab of the ribbon.

When opening the File History window using Windows Explorer, it will show the history for the folder that is currently selected in Windows Explorer.

Another method starts in the File History Control Panel. The Restore personal files link at the bottom of the task pane opens the File History window.

Both of these steps open the File History window where you can view previous version of files that have been saved.

Within this folder you can perform the following actions:

• Click the Home button on the top left view all of the folders and libraries that are being protected by File History.
• Use the right and left arrows at the bottom to navigate between days and times.
• Click to select the files and folders you would like to restore. Use CTRL-Click to select multiple items, and use Shift-Click to select a range of items.
• After selecting all of the files you would like to restore, click the blue button with the circular arrow at the bottom-center of the window to restore the files back to their original location.
• You can also restore files to a location other than their original location by doing the following:
  • Click the Settings icon on the top left of the window (it looks like a gear).
  • Select File > Restore > Restore To.
  • Browse to the folder you want to restore the files and folders to.
  • Click Select Folder.

File History Details

This topic examines the storage, cache and other details related to File History.

Storage

You can save the File History to any drive that satisfies these requirements:

• File History can be on a Local internal drive, Local external drive or network share.
• You cannot put the File History on the same physical disk as the Windows drive.

When File History runs, it uses the NTFS USN journal to pick up changes in important folders. It then replicates these files automatically to the target location.

After enabling File History on either a local disk or network share, the following folder structure is created at the root of that drive or share.

\FileHistory\<User Name>

The user name is in the same format as the name of the user profile folder. A separate user name folder will be created for each user that enables File History and points to the same location. A user name folder will also be created for Public since the default configuration for libraries includes not only the data folders in the user profile, but also the data folder in the Public user profile. Backing up a library requires that the data in all folder locations that make up the library are saved.

\FileHistory\<User Name>\<Computer Name>

The computer name folder allows users on multiple PCs to use the same storage location for File History without conflicting with each other. This is especially important when the same user name is used on multiple PCs.

\FileHistory\<User Name>\<Computer Name>\Configuration

This configuration folder includes a database with the state of all of the files and folders being protected by File History and two XML files with the File History configuration for the given user. Each XML file contains the exact same data.

\FileHistory\<User Name>\<Computer Name>\Data

The Data folder is a peer with Configuration. This is where user data is stored.

\FileHistory\<User Name>\<Computer Name>\Data\<Full path to user data>

The full path to the user’s data is stored starting with a folder named with the drive letter. For example, the path to the documents folder in the Bob user profile would be \c\Users\Bob\Documents\.

\FileHistory\<User Name>\<Computer Name>\Data\<Full path to user data>\<File name> (<Date>).<extension>

The individual files that are stores have the same file name but have the date in UTC format appended to the portion of the name before the extension. For example, you might see a file with the following format: Photo3694 (2011_09_04 19_32_35 UTC).png. This allows all versions of the particular file to be stored in the same folder without name collisions.

Offline Cache

If the external drive or network share that you are using for File History is not available when it is trying to save your data, the data will be copied to an Offline cache in the interim until that storage location becomes available again.

That staging area is located at %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory.

Settings

By default, File History will keep saved versions of your files forever, it will check for and save changes every hour, and it will use up to 5% of the available disk space for the offline cache in %LocalAppData%. All of these items are configurable in the Advanced settings in the task pane of the File History Control Panel.

The options are as follows:

• Save copies of files: This configures the delay between scans for changes.
• Size of offline cache: File History supports network and external locations. This offline cache is used to collect changes when the File History location is unavailable. When a connection to the File History location is restored, the cached changes are sent to the drive.
• Keep saved versions: This setting can be used to limit the maximum age of saved file versions.
• Recommend this drive: This option is for a HomeGroup configuration. If you click this checkbox, other PCs joined to your HomeGroup will see “<Drive> on <Computer name>” as an available choice in the Change drive interface.
• Open File History event logs: This opens the Event Log interface with the File History log selected.

Check it out this feature yourself and comment below.