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Yann ShukorFlag for France

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Previous versions always empty

Hi

I checked this on Windows 7 and Windows 10
Whenever I check the contents of the Previous Versions tab the list is always empty
I have added storage space in the System Protection properties, and checked for the various requirements for this function to operate  properly, but the situation remains pretty static
I then decided to force the scheduled creation of restore points, unfortunately I can't add triggers for the SystemRestore : there are no existing triggers and there is no add button

I'm sure there must be a reasonable explanation

Any ideas ?
thanks
yann
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William Fulks
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Have you configured Backup yet? It's under Control Panel - Backup & Restore. You need to designate a backup drive (other than your hard drive) to save files and such.
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ASKER

Thanks for your response William
Why does backup need to be configured ? This doesn't make sense
Microsoft made it a little confusing in how they set it up. Without combining with regular system backups, previous versions works off restore points. Unless you are making daily changes to your PC, it isn't going to create restore points every day. You can make a scheduled task to automate this, but then you're going to use up a lot of hard drive space.

The better option is to combine previous versions with backup. For example, I have my PC set to backup my files daily to an external hard drive. That way if my PC's hard drive crashes, I still have a backup copy. If you only rely on previous versions via system restore points saved to the same hard drive, in the event of a crash or hardware failure, you're going to lose everything.

So to answer your question, the reason why previous version is empty for certain files is because they were not covered since the last system checkpoint was saved. That's why it is better to run daily backups. Does that make sense?
Here's a great article from PC World magazine on setting up previous versions using Windows Backup in Win 10 - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2974385/windows/how-to-use-windows-10s-file-history-backup-feature.html
The funny thing is that I have come across many a user workstation on which I can restore the previous version of a folder or file and this one isn't configured at all to run backups.
You should be able to test it by creating a simple text file and saving it, then manually create a system restore point, then edit the file and then try to restore the previous version. The restore point should get it.
I wanted to schedule a restore point task but the triggers tab doesn't allow me add a trigger
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William Fulks
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