Can I Delete File History in Windows 10 PC?

What is file history folder?

When Windows 8 was released to the public in October 2012, one of the new features it brought to users was File History. It is still accessible in Windows 10 and 11, and it can help you ensure that you never lose a critical file.

Simply defined, File History is for taking snapshots of all files that users keep in the principal folders or directories linked with their user accounts. Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktops were once known as Libraries. Offline files connected with the user's OneDrive account are also included. However, it cannot back up your whole drive or the whole Windows system.

How to delete file history in Windows 10?

Although file history can avoid the loss of important files, it also takes up much space. The more files it saves, the less free space can use on your drive. Thus, here we’ll show some ways to delete file history in Windows 10/11.

Way 1. Clean up old versions in file history

Step 1. Go to “Keep saved versions” in File History and select “Clean up versions” under it.

Step 2. Select “All but the latest one” or “older than 1 month to 1 year”. Among them, “Older than 1 year” is the default option.

Step 3. Please click “Clean up” to perform. And you will receive the “The cleanup completed successfully” message if it deletes the file from the folder.

Way 2. Change settings of file history

Step 1. Type “file history” in the search box and select it. Then, in the File History window, click “Advanced settings”.

Step 2. Navigate to “Versions” > “Keep saved versions” and select “Until the space is needed” under the drop-down menu.

Step 3. Click “Save changes” and close the File History Window.

Way 3. Turn off back up using file history in Settings

You can also turn off the automatic backup service in Windows Settings.

Step 1. Locate Setting > Update & Security > Backup, then you will see Back up using File History.

Step 2. Click the Automatically back up my files switch button. If it shows Off, the File History is disabled.

Step 3. Go to the backup drive and delete file history folder. Usually, it's named as FileBackup.

If your file history folder is locked, you can:

Step 1. Go to File History again. Click the “Automatically back up my files” to enable file history in Windows 10.

Step 2. Click “More options” and then “Stop using drive under the Back up to a different drive section”.

Step 3. Delete the file history folder in the backup drive.

How to reset file history in Windows 10?

If you don’t want to disable file history backup service, you can reset it to clear the space.

Step 1. Please type “cmd” in the search box and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. Now, type FhManagew.exe –cleanup x –quiet, x is the number of time.

E.g: For files older than 1 month to 1 year, you can type FhManagew.exe -cleanup 0 -quiet (-quiet refers to deleting file history in Windows 10 without interruption.)

Further reading: How to solve file history drive full issue?

After you clear the file history, the file history drive full issue should be improved a lot. But if your C drive is still in a space crisis, then, you might need to do a little work.

Normally, users can use Disk Management to resize the drive, however, if you’ve tried, you will know this tool has many limitations on shrinking, extending, and other operations. So, to flexibly adjust the drive size and manage your disks and drives more conveniently, here we recommend you AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

This multifunctional disk/drive manager for Windows users supports Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP systems. No matter which Windows OS you’re using and what brands your disks belong to, this software can manage them orderly.

▶ To solve the C drive full problem, this tool can offer you 3 options:

•App Mover: This feature allows users to move large folders and installed programs from C drive to another location. After the move, all moved files can be visited normally, and the programs can run as before.

•Allocate Free Space: If your system disk has more than one partition, then this feature can help you directly share part of free space from that partition to the C drive.

•Merge partition: This function can merge two normal partitions on the same disk into one partition and merge non-adjacent unallocated space to the target drive.

And there is the "PC Cleaner" function can help you regularly clear junk files on your disks to keep your system healthy.

◤ Option 1. App Mover

Step 1. Install and launch Partition assistant, click “Free up, then select the “App Mover” feature.

Step 2. In the new window, click “App Mover”.

Step 3. In the new window, you will see all partitions, and the number and size of installed programs on every partition will also be displayed. Select one partition that you want to move applications from and click "Next".

Step 4. Choose the applications you want to move and select the target location, then click "Move".

Step 5. In the pop-up window, you need to confirm forcibly closing running applications when moving starts. Click "OK" to begin the process.

Warning: To ensure the apps run properly during the moving, please don't move or delete files by yourself in the source and target directories. Just leave it all to the software.

◤ Option 2. Allocate Free Space

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. The fresh interface displays the conditions of the physical disk.

Step 2. As we can see from the graphic view, there is enough unused space on the D drive, so we’d like to allocate free space from the D drive to the C drive. Right-click D drive and select "Allocate Free Space".

Step 3. In the pop-up window, we could specify the free space to be allocated, and the destination partition that the free space will be added.

Step4. View "Pending Operations" on the sidebar in case of corrections and then click "Apply" on the toolbar to execute pending operations.

◤ Option 3. Merge Partition

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. On the interface, locate C drive and right-click on it.

Step 2. Find the "Advanced" menu, and select “Merge Partitions”.

Step 3. In the opened window, tick off the unallocated space, and after that, click on “OK”.

Step 4. After returning to the interface, click on “Apply” on the upper left of the screen. Finally, click on “Proceed” to start the merging process.

To sum up

You can delete file history in Windows 10, but you need to apply the correct methods. After clearing file explorer history, your C drive will have more available space. If it’s not enough, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant, it offers more ways for you to extend the C drive space. What’s more, it also can help you clone a disk, migrate OS to another disk without reinstalling, and convert a disk to MBR/GPT without deleting partitions.

In addition, there is the Server Edition for Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003 users to conveniently manage Server computers.