Microsoft has detailed the File History application that will automatically back up user files and provide timeline snapshots of files that have changed over time.
Citing the fact that only 5% of users employ Windows Backup and fewer than half use back-up software, Microsoft said it wanted to remove the responsibility of backing up from customers.
“File History is a backup application that continuously protects your personal files stored in Libraries, Desktop, Favorites, and Contacts folders,” said Bohdan Raciborski, a program manager on the Storage team, in a blog post.
“It periodically (by default every hour) scans the file system for changes and copies changed files to another location. Every time any of your personal files has changed, its copy will be stored on a dedicated, external storage device selected by you. Over time, File History builds a complete history of changes made to any personal file.”
Instead of scanning the volume, which involves opening and reading directories, File History opens the NTFS change journal and quickly scans it for any changes
The company said the improvements would mean work lost or updated in error could be rolled back to earlier versions.
“When a specific point in time version of a file or even an entire folder is needed, you can quickly find it and restore it. The restore application was optimised for browsing, searching, previewing and restoring files,” Raciborski.
Mobile focus
According to Microsoft, the system has also been optimised for laptops, so that it can cope as devices “transition through power states or are being connected and disconnected from networks and devices”.
“File History was designed to be easily interrupted and to quickly resume,” Raciborski said. “This way, File History can resume its operation, without the need to start over when a system goes into sleep mode, a user logs off, the system gets too busy and needs more CPU cycles to complete foreground operations, or the network connection is lost or saturated.”
When the dedicated storage device is disconnected, when switching between office and home, for example, File History starts caching versions of changed files on a system drive, and then flushes it back to the external storage once it's reconnected. The company recommends File History is configured to save to external drives or to network storage to protect against PC failure.
Microsoft said the feature would be pushed as a high-visibility tool, with a new ribbon button added to Windows Explorer specifically for file history, although the service is not turned on by default.
Performance boost
According to Microsoft, the older file management systems could be a drain on resources because they had to trawl through files to find which ones had been updated. As it's now closely integrated with the NTFS file system, File History should require less processor power and work on lower specced machine and tablets.
“In the past, most backup applications used brute force method of checking for changes in directories or files by scanning the entire volume,” Raciborski said. “This approach could significantly affect the system performance and requires an extended period of time to complete. File History, on the other hand, takes advantage of the NTFS change journal.
“The NTFS change journal records any changes made to any files stored on an NTFS volume. Instead of scanning the volume, which involves opening and reading directories, File History opens the NTFS change journal and quickly scans it for any changes.”
File History is part of the Windows 8 Release Preview and is most easily found by searching for "file history" in the Settings menu.
Source: Microsoft details backup time machine for Windows 8 | Enterprise | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/375784/microsoft-details-backup-time-machine-for-windows-8#ixzz20KFIKj51
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