techsupport

2469 readers

3 users here now

The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

Rules: instance rules + stay on topic

Partnered communities:

You Should Know

Software gore

Recommendations

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

GatoB@lemmy.world

Where are my files from Windows 11? (swg-empire.de)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de to c/techsupport@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I migrated my wife's PC after a forceful Windows 11 update to Linux. I made a backup of her files by doing an rsync of almost the complete C: drive onto an external drive formatted with exFAT. This was a grave mistake.

After the Linux installation we noticed that several files were missing and older files were back. My current guess is that I was somehow copying from an old snapshot instead of the current state.

I rsynced everything except for the Windows folder. Does anyone know if there is any chance of getting our filea back? Amd what actually happened?

Edit: After several weeks I finally found the answer. There are two drives in the laptop. But Linux didn't see the NVME drive because it does not support "RST with Optane". As soon as I switched the SATA mode over to AHCI I could see the system drive with the lost files.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Check inside the OneDrive folder.

Could you have copied the wrong disk or something? Did you do the copy in windows, or Linux?

Try using something like ncdu / qdirstat to see if you can find any large folders buried elsewhere on the disk.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

In Linux. I just did an rsync -avP /source /target.

The OneDrive folder is empty except for a desktop.ini file.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah that rsync command should be fine. I suspect you somehow copied the wrong thing, or Windows is using a non standard users folder path for some reason.

You'll probably need to cross your fingers and just look through the disk. Try the tools I mentioned above to search by disk usage, or just do find with some known file names.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I was pretty confident in my method, which is why I didn't bother to check if the file view in Windows was the same as in Linux. I'm currently running ncdu but I'm not very confident. A find run for a known filename yielded nothing.

[–] samwwwblack@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

You probably want to check your wife's Onedrive online with a web browser as by default Windows doesn't keep files locally in Documents/Desktop/Pictures etc.