How to Use Windows File History To start backing up your Windows files with the File History tool: Make sure you have an external hard drive connected to your PC.

File History will automatically back up critical folders and files in Windows and help you restore them.

Learn how to use Version History to Restore Office files. Version History is offered by Office that helps recover your lost work.

Windows 8 can natively mount ISOs, and Task Manager is much improved -- and, perhaps most importantly, Windows 8 now has a built-in, continuous backup tool called File History.

If you use Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service to save your files online, then it’s easy to recover previous versions. Here’s how: Open OneDrive in your browser.

Use Exclude folders to set up locations you don’t want File History to touch, and use Advanced settings to configure how often you want your computer to store file versions and for how long.