File History

Windows 7 included a decent but well‑hidden feature called Previous Versions that allowed you to recover an older version of a document or other data file, perhaps because you made an editing error and then inadvertently saved over the correct version. Previous Versions was a first stab at creating a front end for a service called Volume Shadow Copy that debuted in Windows Server 2003. And it was fine if you knew it was there. But most users didn’t. That’s because you had to right‑click on the document, choose Properties, navigate to the Previous Versions tab, and hope that the appropriate previous version of the file was there.

In Windows 8, Previous Versions has been replaced by a vastly superior feature called File History. This feature works much like Previous Versions did, and utilizes updated versions of the same back‑end technologies. But there are three major differences between Previous Versions and File History. First, File History isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll need to turn it on. Second, File History uses a lot less disk space to perform its backups, thanks to new compression technologies in Windows 8 and its ability to cache backups on your system disk. And third, File History is about a million times easier to use than Previous Versions. OK, we exaggerate. Maybe it’s just a thousand times easier.