File History Backup
Posted: 29 May 2020 09:49
This post is just to let users know not to rely on, or possibly not use, File History to get back any old or lost file.
FH has very good methods of backing up your projects. If you are like me then I use extra backup methods. In the past I thought the inbuilt File History in the recent Windows versions was the way to go. It does however have a severe limitation which means it does not always backup every file as expected. Any file, when it is backed up in File History, has extra information added to the file name which is 26 characters long. It also has a maximum limit of 210 characters to its File Path Length. This means that it will only back up any files that have a File Path Length of 184 characters or less. Some of FH files exceed this length such as the FH Settings files e.g. 188characters 'H:\Family Historian V6\Family Historian Projects\FH Settings 2019-03-16\Family Historian\Program Data\Text Schemes\Standard\Birth, Baptism, Marr, Death, Burial, Rec Notes + notes, ages.fht' which as you can see is 188 characters long. Also I find that many Media files can be too long where they have sensible naming. In my FH Project folder I have 6479 files of which only 5170 get backed up.
This is partly due to the quite long hierarchy of the FH folder structures, and the ridiculous low limit of MS Windows use of File History well below the expected 255 maximum.
FH has very good methods of backing up your projects. If you are like me then I use extra backup methods. In the past I thought the inbuilt File History in the recent Windows versions was the way to go. It does however have a severe limitation which means it does not always backup every file as expected. Any file, when it is backed up in File History, has extra information added to the file name which is 26 characters long. It also has a maximum limit of 210 characters to its File Path Length. This means that it will only back up any files that have a File Path Length of 184 characters or less. Some of FH files exceed this length such as the FH Settings files e.g. 188characters 'H:\Family Historian V6\Family Historian Projects\FH Settings 2019-03-16\Family Historian\Program Data\Text Schemes\Standard\Birth, Baptism, Marr, Death, Burial, Rec Notes + notes, ages.fht' which as you can see is 188 characters long. Also I find that many Media files can be too long where they have sensible naming. In my FH Project folder I have 6479 files of which only 5170 get backed up.
This is partly due to the quite long hierarchy of the FH folder structures, and the ridiculous low limit of MS Windows use of File History well below the expected 255 maximum.