windows 10 (October 2018 update) (version 1809) deleted all my files

I have just updated my windows using the October update (10, version 1809) it deleted all my files of 23 years in amount of 220gb. This is unbelievable, I have been using Microsoft products since 1995 and nothing like that ever happened to me.

Files were located at C:/Users/rober/Documents/

This location is still present, with no files. All of files deleted.

I am extremely upset. Not sure what to do….please let me know.

Robert

Whilst losing files is terrible, the original poster should (especially after 23 years of using Windows) have backed up his data. A 1tb external drive is amazingly cheap and would easily hold all of his 23 years worth of files and more.

Not only that, the files are not missing, but are all in the Windows.old folder after upgrading.

Just because there have never been problems before, there is no excuse for not backing up all of your important files, folders, images or whatever. Windows 10 has File History, Storage Spaces and Backup and Restore built in that you can use to back up data. I recommend Acronis True Image and getting an external hard drive (if you don't already have one) and backing up your data as often as you like, but at least once a month.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but in this day and age of ransomware and advanced malware, you really need to backup. Hard drives can still fail and corruptions can still happen, whether you have a platter HD or a Solid State HD. You need to backup. If you lose files, there really is no excuse.

Dear Microsoft,

Could you PLEASE stop torturing your Windows users with pushed ‘feature’ updates? Can we PLEASE have a choice without any negative consequences to just say ‘no thanks’? This time a line was crossed. Windows as a service - whatever that means in reality - clearly failed. We do NOT want to be pushed into the unknown anymore. Why upgrades twice a year, which means a risky install over an existing install, just for some unimpressive list of features 99% of humanity is not interested in?

An operating system should be a service, a platform for software chosen by users to run. Nothing more, nothing less. It should respect user settings, user’s privacy and by no means keep forcing users to install upgrades of unclear reliability.

Wouldn’t it be a geat idea to pause those disastrous upgrades for let’s say 1,5 year. During this time do all the necessary bugfixes on the versions of Windows 10 that are used the most. For example: focus on 1703 up to and including 1803. Then, in 2020 bring out Windows 11. Based on the old system of only necessary security updates and bugfixes. Make Windows MODULAR and give us the CHOICE of feature modules we might or might not install. Forget about Windows as a service, it failed big time. Please give us back our time, our systems and stop using to push stuff at us without even asking our opinion.

thank you

All true, but still user files are holy, they should never be touched by any forced update or upgrade. If Windows became so unreliable that this behavior is highly possible, Microsoft should have impelemented shadow copies or whatever automatically BEFORE implementing upgrades and even updates. That would probably make the whole update process taking hours or more and thus useless. But doesn’t that say enough about the present state of Windows? About the Microsoft attitude ‘we know best what is good for you, so we just do even if you don’t want’? A blunder like this was about to happen, unavoidable.

Also keep in mind those poor home users with less experience who lost precious photos spanning years. For ‘us’ it’s easy to say that backups should have been made. That - in fact - the Windows folders to store documents are actually exactly NOT the right place to store those important files. After years of fighting with Windows I gave it up, switched to ‘the other side’. Just because I can’t afford waisting my time on repairing problems after updates and especially feature updates.

but why on earth would you upgrade on such a large scale? If you did this as a system manager in a company, that’s like playing Russian Roulette. Your boss might not be happy if something goes wrong.

I am wondering if this issue has anything to do with the addition of OneDrive to the Storage Sense utility (Settings->System->Storage) in the October 2018 Update, which will delete locally-stored files that haven't been opened for a set number of days.  I am also wondering if those who lost files had Storage Sense turned on prior to the update, and those who did not lose any files had it turned off.  Thinking even further, could it be that the update process is turning it on by default with a value for the number of days which is causing the utility to remove files?

I think you're on to something there, BarryG_961!

This helps me with a discrepancy I have noticed in the way the October Update has affected different users. I was looking for a common denominator for those who ACTUALLY LOST data rather than just had it arbitrarily relocated as in my case where I had to find about a terabyte of ostensibly missing data. I found it in C:\users\USERNAME as opposed to C:\users\USERNAME/Documents or any of the variations thereof.

Naturally I was thinking about a common make of computer or even of CPU.

But I uninstalled the OneDrive App when it first came in with Windows 10 back in 2015 and have never missed it. If I want to use OneDrive to store Data I just go to it via Edge.

https://onedrive.live.com/

Certainly if this is TELLING the computer to delete files and folders then that explains a LOT!