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Windows 10 Smart Backups Going Away

June 7, 2017

Microsoft's File History in Windows 8 gave you a "sort of" Apple Time Machine style backup that would let you recover a previous version of a file if you screwed up. In Windows 10, File History was updated so that it backs up more locations automatically, which can be almost totally configured through the Setting app. However, like so many operating system features, File History is not enabled by default. It's probably not enabled because it can eat up a lot of disk space quickly.

Today, you can configure File History to work with OneDrive and backup files to the cloud. Windows guru Paul Thurrott tells his theory as to why this feature is no longer supported by Microsoft. He stated that "…previous versions are device-specific and will be re-created on any PC for which you've enabled File History. By which I mean, if you have two PCs, both using File History to backup the same files in OneDrive, then you will have two different versions of File History backups, stored locally on two different PCs." He believes that Microsoft will put the File History function in OneDrive and not in Windows 10. We'll have to see how good Paul is at predicting the future.

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