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File History is the built in Windows file and folder backup tool that has been around for many years. You can use it in Windows 10 and Windows 11, and it works the same way for both. File History will back up your default Windows user folders such as Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Pictures and more.
But if you want to add a custom folder to your backup that is not located under your user profile with the rest of your folders, there is no option to do so from File History. When you open the File History interface from Control Panel, you will see that there is not an option to add extra folders even though there is a setting to exclude folders.
To view the folders contained within your File History backup, you can browse to the drive that you are using for the backup and look for a folder called FileHistory.
Once you find that folder, you can drill down through the subfolders until you find your backed up files. The path will include the username and computer name associated with the backup. For our example, we can go to the following location to view the backed up files.
F:\FileHistory\todds\WIN11-HOME\Data\C\Users\todds
Now let’s say you wanted to add another folder to your backup that may even be on a different hard drive. For our example, we want to add a folder called Important Files that is on the E drive of our computer.
To do this, we will first need to add it to a Windows library so File History will be able to back it up. A Windows Library is a virtual collection of files and folders from different locations, allowing you to access and organize related content in one place without moving the actual files. Libraries in Windows, such as Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos, help streamline file management by aggregating data from multiple directories.
To add a folder to a Windows library, simply right click on it and then choose the Include in Library option and choose the library that best matches the contents of the folder. For our example, we will add it to the Documents library.
To view the libraries on your computer, you can right click in a blank area over within the left pane of File Explorer and choose Show libraries.
As you can see in the image below, our Important Files folder is listed within the Documents library but not actually mixed in with the files in the Documents folder.
The next time File History runs, it will include the Important Files folder that is on the E drive. Then when we browse the FileHistory backup folder, we will see a separate folder for the E drive and within that we will see the Important Files folder.
If we were then to go to the Restore personal files section of File History, we would see an entry for the default Documents folder as well as another one for the library files for the Documents folder.
Then if we open this folder, we will see the files and folders from the Important Files folder that we added to our backup. Then we can restore them as needed.
To remove a folder from a library, right click the library that it is part of and choose Properties. Then you can delete the folder from there. It will not delete the actual folder itself but just the shortcut that was in the library.
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