What the??? Strange reversion of folder!

[homespon]

I have an Acer Aspire One with Windows7. I was working as usual, saving files to a folder I created called "Documents" on the C drive.

"Documents" contains thousands of files I imported from my old computer through an external hard drive. It's been working great.

Suddenly, without warning or alert or notification, the folder "Documents" reverted to what it looked like about seven weeks ago. When I was first importing stuff from the external hard drive to "Documents," I did half of the folders, then the other half about a day later. I now have that first half of those folders, without the additional files I have added in the past seven weeks. The second half of the folders has completely disappeared.

There is nothing in the recycling bin. The folders have not been moved to another accessible location. Searches for my missing files find the shortcuts and/or "recently used" notations, but no files. The computer has no record of these files other than the shortcuts.

All folders and files outside this "Documents" folder are fine and up-to-date. A game I installed about an hour ago is fine. My browser's history is fine. I just have problems in this one folder.

Does anyone have a CLUE what could have happened???!!

 

[Jonathan_King]

Welcome!

There are a few possibilities. First, could you have a virus? Download Malwarebytes and run a scan.

Second, could it be write caching is enabled for that disk, and you lost connection before the files were written? Did you unplug the drive without using Safely Remove Hardware?

~JK

 

[homespon]

No viruses according to my current program, though I'm running the one you recommended.

I transferred the old files following all the steps, disconnected the external drive, and have been using the Acer without the drive. The external hard drive has been in the drawer for weeks. I'm writing the files directly onto my C drive in this computer.

 

[Jonathan_King]

If all else fails, try recovery software like the free Diskdigger.

 

[richc46]

No one seems to have mentioned (unless I missed it) a feature of windows 7, Backup and restore. Give that a try see if it has copies of your missing files. Just type the name of the program in seaarch to get started.

You could also try to right click on the folder and see if previous versions is an option.

 

[homespon]

Yeah, I can eventually dig my files out, but that doesn't answer the question of what happened, and how I can keep it from happening again!

 

[DarkRhystar]

Yeah, I can eventually dig my files out, but that doesn't answer the question of what happened, and how I can keep it from happening again!

When it comes to strange issues like this, assuming you have no other users on the computer it will usually be a matter of "Is it something you did or something that happened on its own?"

If it's something you did then the solution is simple enough: don't do it again. I learned to watch out for short-cut keys and other interrupts where just typing will activate them. Push the wrong keys, look over at the TV for a few seconds, and BAM!, you're formatting your computer. Well, not really but when I used to use Zone Alarm, that the Allow/Deny pop-up would appear as I was typing on IM and suddenly I had just allow/denied something on accident. Oops. I didn't intentionally do it but it was my fault all the same.

Of course, the other answer is much scarier. The computer did something on its own. Now, with an entire forum of Windows 7 users, if files were mysteriously disappearing in mass quantities then one of us would hopefully notice. Ruling that out means that it's probably piece of software that you installed or some system setting you may have accidentally triggered. The good news is that these things are easy to spot because if it happened once, then it will happen again. The bad news is that if it happened once, it will happen again.

The best thing to do right now is just plan ahead. Keep spare copies of important files in other places (as I'm sure you probably do already) and just be alert. Best case scenario is that it's your fault, something you did as that means it won't happen again (right? ). I say move on and don't worry about it.

 

[homespon]

Well, I do make a practice of backing up files, or this would really sink me, as I make a living with this computer.

But it's just so ODD. :sarc: If the files just went away, that would be weird enough, but why did they revert to something so random as that particular configuration of just one folder? Why suddenly dump a couple dozen Gigs of info?

Personally, I suspect the underwear gnomes.

step 1: revert a random folder to a random image from weeks ago
step 2: ?
step 3: profit!