Solved SP4 File History to Micro SD card

[tundrwd]

My SP4 won't "see" or allow the Micro SD card to be added as a drive for File History.

Yet, I've successfully used this card on two of the cheapie Win8 tablets (upgraded to Win10), and File History worked fine on both of them. I've reformatted the card to NTFS on the SP4, so left-over crud shouldn't be an issue.

Why can't I use the Micro SD on the SP4 for File History. Seems absolutely stupid to have to plug in some USB flash drive for that purpose, when I've got a card installed in/on the unit.

 

[tundrwd]

108 views and no replies?

 

[sharpuser]

@tundrwd

I don't have a Surface Pro 4, but I do have a Surface Book.
I've been using a 128GB SDXC Micro for Windows File History with my Surface Pro 3 for over a year.

Now I have a 512GB SD in my Surface Book which contains my entire music collection, and also serves as the Windows File History drive.

Here's what I suggest:

1) Create a folder on your SDXC drive.
2) Copy a few hundred MB of files onto it.
3) Remove the card.
4) Re-insert the card.
5) Allow Windows to scan and correct any errors.
6) Attempt assigning the card to Windows again via Settings, Update and Security, Backup

Let us know. If it doesn't work, we will pursue further.

 

[tundrwd]

Followed your instructions - didn't do a thing.... Still can't select that drive for File History

 

[GatsbyGlen]

Create a folder on the SD card, right click on it and "Share". This will give it a network path. Then in File History, choose the network path location.

 

[Omni]

Create a folder on the SD card, right click on it and "Share". This will give it a network path. Then in File History, choose the network path location.

You could also create a VHDX file on the sd card. They can be mounted and are viewed by the computer as a separate drive.

 

[tundrwd]

Thanks for the info - but I'm looking for a "fix" - if you will - not work-arounds. I left MS back in the XP days, and when they were forcing Vista on everyone, and went to Mac. So I've been out of the Windows world a while...

I was able to solve it last night. To use File History, the drive MUST be formatted FAT32, and MUST be formatted in the machine it will be used in. I searched for that info - but could not find anything that ever flat-out said it must be FAT32. Probably out there - but couldn't find it. So - since most info says "USB Drive", went back to FAT32 on it, and it works.

 

[GatsbyGlen]

Thanks for the info - but I'm looking for a "fix" - if you will - not work-arounds. I left MS back in the XP days, and when they were forcing Vista on everyone, and went to Mac. So I've been out of the Windows world a while...

I was able to solve it last night. To use File History, the drive MUST be formatted FAT32, and MUST be formatted in the machine it will be used in. I searched for that info - but could not find anything that ever flat-out said it must be FAT32. Probably out there - but couldn't find it. So - since most info says "USB Drive", went back to FAT32 on it, and it works.

No, the drive does not need to be FAT32. I use File History with an NTFS drive. It's a second internal SSD. I simply added a shared network path to a folder on the drive.

 

[tundrwd]

No, the drive does not need to be FAT32. I use File History with an NTFS drive. It's a second internal SSD. I simply added a shared network path to a folder on the drive.

Well - that's not really using the drive is it? That's using a share, a network folder - not "finding" the drive to create the folder, etc. I don't want that - as I said, I wanted to use drive itself, without "workarounds".

And yes, I'm aware the network folder is supported - I don't want that.

 

[Omni]

Workarounds are something you have to get used to with windows from time to time. If it works just the same I can't see a problem. Most OS's don't even have other options so its good workarounds exist.

 

[GatsbyGlen]

Work arounds are what make Windows fun. Maybe you can't do that with apples.

 

[tundrwd]

Work arounds are what make Windows fun. Maybe you can't do that with apples.

Well - fun? Depends. I dislike searching for quite a while to find a "workaround". Or - let's call them "options".

OSX? It's unix under the hood - have at it. Not much you can't do at the command line level.

I love options - however, when the thing is - by default - supposed to work with some type of drive - then that's the method I'd prefer. Can it be setup with a share? Yep - but that's extra overhead on a limited machine. Going to chew up a tad more memory, and slow down writes/reads. The other issue is the fact that it's shared. I'm still trying to get into the new sharing/public/private networking. Played with it, and it never seems to do what I think it's supposed to. And since 90% or more of the usage of the SP4 will be "in the wild", I'm not too fond of opening up yet one more avenue for illicit access to the system.

I've been developing and writing software (commercial) on everything MS had from DOS 1.0 back in '81/'82 up to Vista (ok - I didn't use Windows 1.0 - saw it - it sucked). That's when I decided to jump ship for my personal use. I hated having to reinstall XP every 3-6 months or so just to keep it clean, and running as fast as it should. Ever since Win 3.0, there's always been something in there that causes Windows to "lunch itself". I was really going to go to Linux, but one app stopped me - Photoshop.

Been playing with 8 on one of the cheapie tablets since early this year, loaded up the Win10 preview and played with that. I will say the W10 is improved over W8. Still has quirks and throwbacks, but much improved.