Windows 8 File History Backup Large Folders

Hi, I'm trying to setup Windows 8's File History software to backup folders. I noticed that the only library it does not like to backup is my music library.

So far what I've done to troubleshoot this problem is:

1. remove my music folder from the music library
2. add a small documents folder to the music library and it backed up just fine.
3. tried adding music folder to music library once more and it "attempts" to back it up but stops after 2 seconds without ever putting a file on my external hard drive.

The biggest folder size I've been able to sync through File History is about 10GB. My music folder is 60GB and refuses to be synced through File History.

I thought this would be a pretty good backup utility especially since it's free but I have my doubts now.
Has anybody had success with syncing very large folders through File History? And what suggestions do others have to alternative backup software?

 

"Note
File History doesn't back up files on your PC that you have synced with SkyDrive, even if they're in folders that File History backs up."

From:

Set up a drive for File History - Microsoft Windows Help

Also, did you set the offline cache size, under the advanced options?

EDIT: What does your file history error log show?

 

I don't get what you mean by the skydrive thing. I've never used skydrive.

How do I see the File History Error Log?

 

If you never used Skydrive, I guess it's not your problem.

Do you have that folder synced with any other external location (i.e. Dropbox)?

To see the history, open the Admin Tools > Event Viewer > Apps & Service Logs > Microsoft > Windows > FileHistory-Engine > File History Backup Log. (See pics).

Note any Error Event ID, and see the general info. You can also Google the Event ID.

 

Sweet found it! And naw I've never synced the music folder to anything before that I can think of. I mean it's 60GB so I don't see how I could have haha. Thanks for the help by the way.

These are the logs that I found for it when I looked.


I'll Google it more tomorrow morning and look further into cause at the moment I didn't find anything helpful. What do you think?

 

So far I've found that this is a very common problem with backing up music through File History. No solutions found yet.... -_-

 

Interesting to see how Microsoft screwed up the perfectly fine Volume Shadow Copy Service in Windows 8.x, too...

On topic, the issue is obvious, in that, apparently, in Windows 8.x the "My Music" folder is now a reparse point (meaning a junction link pointing to some other location), and that wonderful File History system apparently cannot deal with this situation. It's not hard to fix this, but only after understanding why this is a reparse point now, and what other functionality could be affected by choosing any of a number of possible fixes. In any case, I'm not using Windows 8.x (for reasons like this one, I might add), so I can't help you with the details, sorry.

 

Reparse point scan error.

FileHistory - unable to scan user libraries for changes and perform - Microsoft Community

You may have already seen this link.

 

Nice. Looks like the solution is to use Windows 7. But we knew this already...

 

Actually, this is not a Win 8 generated problem. It's been around for a while.

Windows 7 backup error code 0x81000037 "Shadow files cannot be - Microsoft Community

 

Well, different issue, same result. In any case, In Windows 7 both backups and Previous Files work fine.

But, yeah, at the bottom of this is the Windows' team apparent inability to understand their own filesystem...

 

Yea I tried following those steps but none of it really fit with my problem especially since the people that fixed it didn't really know why from what I read hah. I'm going through adding chunks of my artists from the music folder right now to see if there is a section that causes the problems. I'll update with the results soon.

 

So true. The troubleshooting steps the Windows support tells you to go through are absurd for many problems and reveal nothing useful from what I've seen -__-

 

Not to be a killjoy, in the MS vacuums department, but I have a "ton of" music files in my Win 8.1 system, and my automatic file backup doesn't give me any error when backing them up. :yes:

 

Actually that's really reassuring because it just means I gotta get my folder to act in the same way yours is set up.

 

Problem solved. :thumbsup:

For some reason iTunes thought it'd be a good idea to separate Dave Matthews Band into two different artist folders, one called "Dave Matthews Band" and the other "Dave Matthews Band". Solved it simply by just changing the second folder's name matched the first and merged the two folders.

iTunes didn't have a problem working with these two folders separate even though the artists were labelled the same within iTunes but I guess File History did.

Glad everything's good to go now! Thanks for your time guys :hi2: