What happened to the data files?

[Hiker Guy]

Finished my upgrade from Vista Ultimate 64 to Win 7 Pro 64, all went well, and things seem to be working out great. Updated BIOS, drivers, etc.

I have my personal data stored on two hard drives, one for backup of the other. So, last night I was going through my photographs and videos of my Dad's 90th birthday party (on my primary data drive), and there was only ONE photo!!!!!! Should have been 600!!!!!! Absolutely could not find the photos, reopened folders, etc.

I was able to restore these files from my backup drive, as they were all there (thankfully).....BUT WHAT HAPPENED? Both data drives are identical, and I typically use AllSync from the primary drive to the backup.

I can think of no activity that I have done that caused that to happen.

 

[harpua]

There may be a file on the hard drive W7 is installed on called Windows.old that should contain copies of all your data from your previous install. After you get everything figured out and make sure you don't need it, you can delete that file but for now, if you can't find something, it should be in there.

But photos are supposed to go in C:\users\yourusername\my pictures

And, if you have more than one location for storing photos, you should add them all to the Pictures "Library" and then all those different locations will be accessible from that one location (which is actually meant to be a central pointer to or access point for the other locations, which can even be on other hard drives).

 

[nate42nd]

I just did this very thing. I have all my music and pictures on another drive. It works fine but I was surprised to see a message when I added the folders to the library. It said something like:

"do you want the folder to be shared? You can still add to the library and not have it shared.....yada yada"

Every time I do ANYTHING with sharing, I mess it up, so I quit until I gain more knowledge. Why would it ask me if I want to share something that's hooked to the same motherboard? Unless it has to do with the "homegroup"

I did like the Vista feature "show me all files I am sharing" I cannot seem to find the same thing in Win7

 

[harpua]

Yes, it has to with sharing via the homegroup. You can ignore that for now if you are not wanting to share these files over a network with other computers. You can always move anything you want to share in the future into the empty "public" folder that should be in all your libraries by default. That's what those public folders are there for . . . , to make sharing over a homegroup easier. I think it probably only works well with other computers running W7, however.

 

[nate42nd]

Okay, Thanks for the tip. I have Vista right now on my network and it's a pain to set up. (for me)