Right – this could be a bit of a long one…

I do some freelance work for my old company so still have a work laptop that I can connect to their network and do my stuff.

As my personal laptop has been playing up recently I ended up using the work one a fair bit so in “my documents” were a mixture of work related and non-work related files and folders. The non-work included some photos etc… so in total was a reasonable amount of stuff (10-15 gig).

When I’ve done “work” it always get stored on their network in the end but in transit I tend to just save things to the c: drive.

So one day last week I turned my computer on there was nothing in the “my documents” folder so I did a search for a document I knew the name of and it was in a different location on the lines of “my compuer”>
“c:”>”documents and settings”>”my username”> then the docs.

Essentially I thought apart from the “my username” bit it looked like a long way round of getting to the same location so just moved evertytihng back to my documents, it all moved instantly with no waiting so just assumed it was moving it pretty much to the same place – if you see what I mean?!

All was well until the next day when I turned my computer on and everything in “my documents” had gone missing and is nowhere on the hard drive having searched for known file names etc…

It’s also not on the network and not in recyle bin, it’s as though 10-15 gigs of info never existed.

I sent my laptop back to the IT people at work and they drew a blank having tried to do file recoveries etc… and have just sent it back to me as is.

Therefore as it stands I have lost loads of files and docs and the folder they were in is now blank as if the computer is brand new.

Anyone got any idea what may have happened??!!

PS Yes I know I should have backed it all up…!

Sounds like a folder redirection GPO of ‘My Documents’ but I certainly wouldn’t expect this to delete anything – the files should be where you left them 🙁

I hope this isn’t the case, but you might want to read THIS thread.

It’s been a few years since I did desktop/GPO work but it looks like it’s possible that deletion can occur. Might want to ask your IT if they made a change, bt I don’t expect they will have backed the data up unless your running something like Backup Exec DLO (which you would notice as it chewed up your bandwidth when VPN’d in).

Essentially I thought apart from the “my username” bit it looked like a long way round of getting to the same location so just moved evertytihng back to my documents, it all moved instantly with no waiting so just assumed it was moving it pretty much to the same place – if you see what I mean?!

If it’s on the same volume, nothing moves, just pointers to the file location are changed.

I assumed IT must have done something but they reckon because it was on my hard drive it wouldn’t have been possible.

Got a feeling that had I not moved anything it would all still be there…!

My Documents isn’t a ‘real’ folder. It’s a pretend one, which maps back to an actual folder, which is usually

on the lines of “my compuer”>
“c:”>”documents and settings”>”my username”>

So what you’ve done is dragged the files from where they actually were, to the pretend folder, which is actually where they were in the first place. Thereby creating a vortex and a black hole that has sucked everything in*

*this sentence may be hyperbole

The path you list is the ‘real’ path to My Docs, that’s normal.

Moving files on the same volume (from C:\somewhere to C:\somewhere-else) is near-instant as Windows is bright enough not to move the data around, it just changes where it lists it. So far so froody.

It’s possible that there’s something clever going on with offline folders, group policy, synchronisation etc. which has gone mad. I do wonder if in this case though it’s something more simple. It’d be helpful to know what IT have done with it. I’d hope as a bare minimum they’ve checked the disk for errors and made a reasonable attempt at data recovery. There are many many options here, and I’m struggling to think of a reason why this would fail that isn’t “we couldn’t be arsed looking.”

Long shot but, did you definitely log in with the same username both times?

Yes – pretty sure as only have the one username.

Think IT ran some sort of file recovery software but it’s not like it was a few files – it was a lot of folders and sub folders all with loads of docs, pics, excel files etc… in.

Just checked and no way I can log on with a different user name or different domain – has it therefore gone forever?!

Have *you* tried any disk recovery software?

If it’s FAT based, you have a pretty good chance if you haven’t created any new files.

I don’t know what happens with NTFS.

Just because your IT dept say they’ve done the same, it doesn’t mean they have.

Offline synchronisation set to one way only?

rumbledethumps – what does that mean to the lay man?!

When you logged in the day you noticed your stuff had gone, were you on the work’s network?
Had you logged into the works network at all after moving your stuff around?
And when I say logged into the works network, I mean there, on their premises connected directly to their LAN, not over VPN from home.

Colwyn58 –

Offline folders have a two way or a one way sync. It may be possible that you have a one way sync configured (you may have deleted/moved the folder/file(s) on the folder that is the master folder and this has replicated these changes to the offline (cached) one on your laptop.

Just a guess.

franciscobegbie – all I’ve ever done is connect through the VPN as not been back to the office since leaving…!

However am guessing when I sent it to the IT bods they connected in the office to the network.

A final part of the “mystery” is that I’ve subsequently found a file in the recycle bin that I (intentionally) deleted from one of the original folders and restored it and then it has remade the folder in “my docs” but dissapointingly it’s the only file in the folder… (if that makes sense).