Moving My Pictures library location deleted its entire contents (Win7)

I wanted to free up some space on my C drive by moving the Library "My Pictures" to my E drive. From the Explorer sidebar I was able to navigate to a section that had an option to do just that - migrate all of my files.


I initiated the process but was interrupted by an overwrite dialogue box, asking me if I wanted to replace, rename, or skip each individual item with the checkbox to apply to all other conflicts. Deciding I wanted to avoid this and do it manually, I hit "Cancel." I was then presented with a completely empty My Pictures in E. I went to check the My Pictures in C but Windows deleted it along with all its contents.



Recuva doesn't yield anything - as if it wasn't deleted. What do I do?

townsbg said:

Does it look like any less space it taken up? Browse to c:\users\<username>\Pictures and see if they are there.

Hard to say honestly - it's my SSD I only use for my OS, files that default there and I haven't symlinked out like AppData, and the rare program that I want/need to be SSD fast.



C:\Users\<username>\Pictures sadly doesn't exist beside its sibling \Videos, unfortunately, though I'm 90% sure that's the file the Library 'My Pictures' used to point to.

RolandJS said:

If those pictures are important, do not write to the drive any more than necessary. Follow townsbg's advice and give an update.

I've been trying to see what writes to C in the background (via Recuva and EaseUS Free) as I certainly never intend to myself. So far Google Chrome is the only frequent culprit, as it apparently stores temporary images there.


On the plus side Recuva and EaseUS both find plenty of old stuff on my C drive (so I have plenty of space to go before I begin overwriting?). On the minus, neither of them have any idea what I'm talking about when I look for C:\Users\<username>\Pictures/My Pictures/etc.

townsbg said:

Does it look like any less space it taken up? Browse to c:\users\<username>\Pictures and see if they are there.

Interestingly, plugging exactly that into a file explorer window (instead of navigating there via clicks) takes me to E:\Pictures, where I intended to move My Pictures.

Sadly, no.

townsbg said:

You shouldn't just "move" folders from the library because those are system folders and have to be reassigned correctly. Also I would have copied the folder rather than move it until you verified that the files where ok, but you don't need hindsight now. For the drive the pics was on is there any less space used now?

Hard to say honestly - it's my SSD I only use for my OS, files that default there and I haven't symlinked out like AppData, and the rare program that I want/need to be SSD fast.


Suffice it to say that because of the above factors, I did not memorize the amount of free space. All I can say is there's 286GB free of 465GB now. The good news and the bad news is that if I had to guess the folder in its entirety contained ~2-5GB, so on the upside it's less likely to be overwritten, but on the downside it's not a large enough space for me to notice if it's not there - even if I was paying it closer attention; again, I just don't eyeball my C drive much.


In the meantime while I/we figure this out, would it be a:

• Good Idea

or

• Bad Idea

to free up space on the C drive?


My thinking was that it'd give Windows more options when it comes to the unavoidable necessity of writing new stuff on its OS drive.