Now that I’m running Windows File History on my Win8 system [see: Set up Windows File History] it’s all moving along smoothly, but I’m missing the other half of the picture: How do I recover a lost, deleted or overwritten file from the File History archive?
Now that’s a very reasonable question! As with Mac OS X’s Time Machine file versioning and recovery system, which has an easy setup and complicated recovery process, so does Windows 8’s Windows File History service have a pretty easy setup and a confusing recover solution. There are times I wonder if these software developers actually use the software they develop, actually, but that’s another story.
As you already now know, Windows File History requires an external storage device (or at least a separate disk to the boot drive) so if you have an external unit, you’ll need to start by making sure it’s plugged in, of course. That’s easy.
Now what you’d like is to be able to click a secret button or choose “Recover files from this folder” in the context menu by right-clicking on a folder, but neither of those are available. Instead you’ll find that you need to go to the Windows File History version of your file system — whatever folders you’re backing up — and then navigate through to the correct location, then try to recover the specific file.
Yeah, a bit tedious.
But let’s do it. Start by going to Settings –> Control Panels and clicking on “Save backup copies of your files with Windows File History”. You’ll see this:
See “Restore personal files” on the left side? Yeah, that’s what you want. Very obvious, right?
Click on it and you’ll see the folders and library data that’s backed up, along with the date and time of the most recent version history backup:
If the file I seek is newer than this most recent backup, Windows File History won’t know it exists. If it’s changed 50 times since then, well, then all those more recent changes are invisible to the program. But if it’s just perfect and reflects a date and time between when I had the good version of the file and when I got overzealous and messed things up, all is good.
To proceed, I’ll double-click on “Desktop” to see if the file I seek is available:
Ahhhh there it is, “My Novel (draft 1)”. Thank goodness!
To recover earlier versions of a specific file, click on the file to select it, then click on the green “recover” button on the bottom, or just choose to step through versions of every file and folder in the current folder you’re viewing.
Windows File History will tell you how many files it has available located in this folder:
There are three files — a folder, a movie file and a Word document — so it’s been backing everything up. Good.
I hate having things automatically happen in any program, so here I’m going to click on “Let me decide fo reach file” so I know exactly what’s happening. Here’s what I see:
The left column are the backups, while the right column represents items that are already in the folder. To retain everything as is, simply choose the checkbox adjacent to “Files already in…” the folder.
I want to recover the earlier version of the Word document, however, so I’ll check the box adjacent to “My Novel (draft1).docx”. In this instance, the date and time information and file sizes are very similar. In many cases that’ll be true, but in other cases the older version could be quite a bit larger (if it’s “pre-purge” novel, for example) or the newer verison could be bigger (in which case I’d save it by copying it to a new “backup” name before I restored on top of it).
Ready to restore? Just click on “COntinue” after you’ve made your choices and in a second or two the file will be restored to its most recent backed up version.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if it said “more than 20% difference between files” or “seven versions saved over the last two weeks” or “version with the most changes: #5, saved 4 days ago” or similar? One can only hope that these particular corner of Windows 8 continues to received UI refinements as the system evolves.