File History is a file backup feature that helps you archive your files on Windows 8 and is a feature that has been in demands for quite some time.
File History File Archival System On Windows 8
Files History is the feature that replaces ‘Windows Backup’ in Windows 8. It takes on after the Volume Shadow Copy feature that has been present in Windows for quite some time now and it is used to preserve a snapshot of the same file at different points in time. This system is in fact used in the System Restore feature in Windows 7. It keeps track of important system files that may be required to do a roll back once you make changes to the system.
It is similar to the back up system that Apple touted for the current OS X Lion, where you can step back in time and retrieve a version of the file. Even though Windows has been doing it for years now, the user interface to control it for regular user-owned files has only come out in Windows 8. It is basically Windows Backup in a new, more useful avatar.
File History takes it for granted that your important files will be in the ‘libraries’ that have been earmarked for them — videos in ‘Videos’, documents in ‘Documents’ and photos from your Digital camera in ‘Pictures’. So all programs know where your important files are automatically and so does File History. But you can exclude files and folders from being backed up by marking them as exceptions in the File History Exceptions dialog box.
This is important because File History is designed to take a back up of your system every hour. So by excluding what you don’t need, you will save some resources. The good thing is that File History works on SkyDrive as well, so you can set your back up to go straight to cloud. The easiest way is of course to take a USB drive and plug it in.