How to recover File History for a previous computer

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Hi.

My computer died on me about 10 days ago. Fortunately, I had a spare, and most things were backed up through OneDrive. However, I discovered that I had omitted to redirect my Music folder to OneDrive – hence all music is missing on the new machine.

I had used FileHistory on the old machine, backing up to a MyCloud network device. Therefore the music is safe, but with date-appended filenames. I’m sure it’s possible to get File History to recover the old files to my new machine – but how? As with so many things in Windows 10, the stripped-down interface does not help you to do even simple tasks.

Any guidance would be welcome.

Thanks

Steven

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This article is nearly four years old (e.g. “Creators Update”), but I don’t think File History has changed since then. The author clearly has practical experience of potential pitfalls:

How to correctly use File History to transfer data files to a new Windows 10 installation

The short version seems to be; don’t Turn On file history before selecting “use a previous backup”, but do then expect a backup operation to commence before you can restore files.

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Can you whip the hard disk out of the old machine and copy the files to the new machine?

cheers, Paul

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Recently got a fine new machine after 11 (!) years. It came with Windows 10 Pro installed and works like a charm.

*However*, on copying thousands of files from my backups to the new computer, somehow the OS has changed all the file names!

Eg. A file named “letter1.txt” now becomes “letter1 (2018_04_20 19_22_48 UTC).txt !!

As they say, “What Happened!?”

Is there a way I can recover the original names without manually renaming each file?

 

-Peter

 

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Some used File History to restore files without the timestamp in the same situation:

Backed Up Files Have UTC Timestamp

Others resorted to using a free Bulk Rename Utility to remove the timestamps:

Files being copied from Western Digital Passport have datestamp…

(Success confirmed in the last post of each of those threads.)

 

Both methods are also confirmed in this Microsoft Community thread:

How to remove backup timestamp from the files

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

WSpfeldmann

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Yes, I confess to using a WD Passport as one of my backup drives! It’s comforting to know that others have encountered this extremely annoying “feature”. I thought I had somehow munged the file explorer settings. At least I wasn’t having delirious visions . . .

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

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I note what appears to be a javascript program meant to rename filenames. To run it, a 729 MB file must be installed!

Wow.

I recall using PC-DOS in 1982 (before MS-DOS) and writing 300 Byte(!) .BAT files to do recursive file renaming.

As a SW engineer employed by me once mentioned, “Beware of Creeping Elegance!”

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