Moved 'documents', now all my files are gone..

[Paul van der Heu]

I just installed Vista ultimate and (as I did with XP) I kept my 'my
documents'filder on a separate drive. When I assigned the 'documents'folder
of Vista to that folder (in my case E:\_my Documents_) all files in that
folder were gone, just the subfolders remain..

Now I put the 'documents'assignement back to its original place, but the
old folder is still gone and still called 'documents'. I can access the E:
\_my documents_ folder through a shell, but also there all files have
gone..

Before I gab my copy of R-Studio I was hoping someone had any tips.

 

[Richard Urban]

If you feel the files are gone, using rStudio yesterday would have been a
good choice on your part.

The longer you wait the greater the chance that they may be over written. If
they are gone, anything else you do to try to repair for the error may over
write them.

I would recover them to a external hard drive - even if they are just on
your computer in an unorthodox location. Then try to repair for the
situation.

I have done exactly what you have tried to do (over 50 times now) without
any problems. It is the way I set up my customers computers - all private
files on partition D: (usually dual booting with Windows XP) so that both
operating systems use the same information storage area.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Keith Miller MVP]

The folder has probably acquired the Display name of 'Documents' via a
hidden. system file named 'desktop.ini'. You can delete it. But I wouldn't
go deleting anything if you want to recover your files.

I would look for the files by opening a command prompt window and typing the
following:

E:<Enter>
dir /a /s <KnownFileName>

the results should let you know if the file is anywhere on the drive,
regardless of attributes.

 

[Paul van der Heu]

I would look for the files by opening a command prompt window and
typing the following:

E:<Enter>
dir /a /s <KnownFileName>

the results should let you know if the file is anywhere on the drive,
regardless of attributes.

Tried this on a few files I knew were there, but no results. R-studio cam
up blank too. To make matters worse I plugged in my old drive with the
original E:\ partition on it (I installed a bigger drive at teh same time
as installing Vista and copied the partition there).

To my great disgust I found Vista decided to also make the _My Documents_
folder on that drive visible as Documents ( guess this is a virtual
folder?!) and apparantly wipe the contents there too.. why this is I have
no clue.. but it seems I am seriously screwed here losing much data and
work.

Needles to say I am shelving Vista and returning to XP. Right now this
upgrade has costs me serious time and money and probably will loose me
money as well.. I have just found a serious antitrust towards Vista and
it'll be a while before I let it near any of mys systems again..

This is just unbelievable BS.. I guess it's "Thanks fornothing Microsoft"

Maybe a mac or Linux is not so bad after all..

 

[Paul van der Heu]

While I am still shocked by the events of teh last hours it seems I
overlook the recovered files R-Studio found. Not that I am surprised, since
R-Studio is IMO the king of the hill in this area..

I am in teh process of checking teh results so here's hoping..

Still feel this is a serious booboo on the part of vista though..

 

[Paul van der Heu]

While I am still shocked by the events of teh last hours it seems I
overlook the recovered files R-Studio found. Not that I am surprised,
since R-Studio is IMO the king of the hill in this area..

I am in teh process of checking teh results so here's hoping..

Still feel this is a serious booboo on the part of vista though..

Boy.. did I have issues with putting the H and E in the right sequence in
the previous message..

It seems I was able to recover the files I lost, and oddly enough A second
attempt to link My Documents with the same folder worked fine..

Dunno what happend the first time, but let's see if all keeps going well..
Needles to say I have am now in the process of a full backup of all data
'just in case'.

 

[Keith Miller MVP]

Glad there was a happy ending -- take care.

 

[Guest]

Consider using those tiny flashdrives to backup ALL things that are
important. I love those things. They make them in a couple gigs now and not
as expensive as they used to be. It's like having extra hard-drive anywhere
you want to take it. ~ ceece