Missing Files From Documents Folder

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I switched on my W10(22H2) PC this morning, went to the Documents folder, which is on a separate HDD to the operating system and it was empty, except for the Pictures sub-folder, which was itself empty. The rest of the drives contents appeared intact. I ran a disc scan of the drive which reported no errors. Fortunately I had a recent backup so didn’t lose too much, but I can’t figure out what happened to the original contents. Can anybody throw some light on the problem?
Thanks
A1ex

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Did you move the documents folder back to the C: drive via Explorer?
Did you update Windows / other software?
Why don’t you have a daily data backup? Add another internal disk and run a scheduled backup to it, then copy the backups to an external disk at regular intervals.

cheers, Paul

p.s. why are your docs on a separate disk?

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Hi Paul,
I originally moved Docs, together with several other data folders, to a separate drive so that data would be unaffected by operating system failures. It’s worked ok for a long time. This latest issue affected the Docs folder only, which surprised me. I have Malwarebytes and additional AV progs which work well.
I do have another internal disk and back up regularly to it, although not daily.
It didn’t appear to be a disk problem, since everything else on the disk was ok.
I remain puzzled.
A1ex

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Odd that the files would all disappear at the same time.
Did you play with OneDrive?

cheers, Paul

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Make sure your “Storage Sense” is off which supposedly automatically frees up space:

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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Storage Sense is off, and I don’t use One Drive, which I’ve disabled.

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geekdom

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