Data-loss-filter
November 21, 2015 5:53 PM Subscribe
I (probably ill-advisedly) left my computer to be used by a family member for a few months. Upon returning, there are a number of folders missing, and other folders have had their names lowercased. What? The interim user swears up and down that they've no idea how it happened- and they are a mid-to-very competent computer user. It's all backed up and therefore safe, but those files are simply gone for no apparent reason. So what sort of gremlin 1) deleted files and 2) lowercased some folder names?
Windows 7. No obvious signs of malware, but files going missing is worrying.
Windows 7. No obvious signs of malware, but files going missing is worrying.
Were they using dropbox? I don't know why your folders would have been in their dropbox, but I do recall dropbox having some weirdness where it would lowercase folder names.
posted by nat at 7:10 PM on November 21, 2015
posted by nat at 7:10 PM on November 21, 2015
Response by poster: Recovering them really isn't the problem- I have backups.
There are some really unusual things missing, including my Lightroom catalog. Renaming multiple folders of game saves, multiple levels into a directory to lower-cased versions, and deleting some files and leaving others suggests something went horribly wrong. It was probably user-initiated somehow, but how?
posted by BungaDunga at 7:12 PM on November 21, 2015
There are some really unusual things missing, including my Lightroom catalog. Renaming multiple folders of game saves, multiple levels into a directory to lower-cased versions, and deleting some files and leaving others suggests something went horribly wrong. It was probably user-initiated somehow, but how?
posted by BungaDunga at 7:12 PM on November 21, 2015
This sounds like someone attempted file recovery when things were pretty far gone. I've had similar oddness (slightly weird file names, arbitrarily missing files/folder) happen when trying to get back deleted files after the system had actively written to the drive after the deletion. Have any new (file recovery) applications been installed since you last saw it?
As to how things were deleted in the first place, you'll have to find out from Family Member. It could have been something like a hard drive failure and they did their best to salvage what happened. Or it could have been something clumsy like trying to (re)install an operating system, or just accidentally dragging large swaths of things to the trash and then opting to empty it when the OS offered the option to free up disk space.
posted by Ookseer at 7:58 PM on November 21, 2015
As to how things were deleted in the first place, you'll have to find out from Family Member. It could have been something like a hard drive failure and they did their best to salvage what happened. Or it could have been something clumsy like trying to (re)install an operating system, or just accidentally dragging large swaths of things to the trash and then opting to empty it when the OS offered the option to free up disk space.
posted by Ookseer at 7:58 PM on November 21, 2015
I have once come accross some third-party Windows tool that did things like scanning around your filesystem and changing the timestamps on files selected by the user using filters. ( This was part of an elaborte multi-PC backup/file sync strategy in the days before dropbox). Maybe something like that has run amok on your filesystem?
The other culprit messing with innocuous files deep in the directory tree might be AV software moving things in/out of quarantine an bungling up - have you checked the logs?
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:55 PM on November 21, 2015
The other culprit messing with innocuous files deep in the directory tree might be AV software moving things in/out of quarantine an bungling up - have you checked the logs?
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:55 PM on November 21, 2015
This sounds like the kind of thing a crappy one of those "duplicate file detector" or "drive organizer" programs would do. You know the recover free space now! sort of quasi snake oil poorly made ones.
I'm speaking from a bit of experience here. But this sounds like something a sort of knowledgeable person would do who didn't want to delete any of your files but wanted space to download a whole season of a tv show, or whatever. And then they ran the stupid organizer program, and it shitted everything up.
posted by emptythought at 10:03 PM on November 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
I'm speaking from a bit of experience here. But this sounds like something a sort of knowledgeable person would do who didn't want to delete any of your files but wanted space to download a whole season of a tv show, or whatever. And then they ran the stupid organizer program, and it shitted everything up.
posted by emptythought at 10:03 PM on November 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
How stable is this person and how is your relationship? Could they have done this deliberately to fuck with you?
posted by PercussivePaul at 6:31 AM on November 22, 2015
posted by PercussivePaul at 6:31 AM on November 22, 2015
Do you have Rename Master (or possibly some other feature similar program) installed? The interface is vaguely windows explorer like and the symptoms are the sort of trouble you can get into with it.
posted by Mitheral at 9:09 AM on November 22, 2015
posted by Mitheral at 9:09 AM on November 22, 2015
Best answer: I lent my laptop for 10 minutes to my mother's husband. This is a man who has to be reasonably competent on a computer for work.
In 10 minutes he managed to lose some of my writing, and rearrange things. He has no idea how this happened. He was just "using the computer the way he's always used the computer."
If I had given him the computer for a few months, nothing would have looked the same when he returned it to me.
posted by miles1972 at 10:00 AM on November 22, 2015
In 10 minutes he managed to lose some of my writing, and rearrange things. He has no idea how this happened. He was just "using the computer the way he's always used the computer."
If I had given him the computer for a few months, nothing would have looked the same when he returned it to me.
posted by miles1972 at 10:00 AM on November 22, 2015
My cats do this kind of thing to me by random key presses. Periodically my keyboard resets to a random language, and my icons turn generic so all seven shortcuts on my desktop have identical icons.
I've also had weird stuff happen when an upgrade installed itself deeper than I expected, such as by backing up config files I didn't want backed up, and had more weird stuff happen when the computer shut down suddenly and traumatically due to either a power outage, or the stupid cat sitting down complacently on the power button.
Once I was left alone with a brand new computer at my job and started by personalizing the appearance back to the boring blue and grey windows default since I found the new windows colours distracting. This killed the computer and cost a 90$ service call to re-install its software because it actually uninstalled the windows version.
My current computer came with two download location, one called Downloads and one called My Downloads. This has caused some confusion when downloaded files have vanished because they are in the other download file. You missing files my actually be in a similarly named location.
When you loan your computer to someone these are the dreadful kinds of things that will probably happen.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:24 PM on November 22, 2015
I've also had weird stuff happen when an upgrade installed itself deeper than I expected, such as by backing up config files I didn't want backed up, and had more weird stuff happen when the computer shut down suddenly and traumatically due to either a power outage, or the stupid cat sitting down complacently on the power button.
Once I was left alone with a brand new computer at my job and started by personalizing the appearance back to the boring blue and grey windows default since I found the new windows colours distracting. This killed the computer and cost a 90$ service call to re-install its software because it actually uninstalled the windows version.
My current computer came with two download location, one called Downloads and one called My Downloads. This has caused some confusion when downloaded files have vanished because they are in the other download file. You missing files my actually be in a similarly named location.
When you loan your computer to someone these are the dreadful kinds of things that will probably happen.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:24 PM on November 22, 2015
Response by poster: Looks like my files were moved from the teensy SSD system drive to the nice big HDD- which itself managed to develop bad sectors and required rescuing to another disk. As soon as I had a working image of that disk, it was obvious where the files had been moved.
Family member still claims no memory of moving them! It must have been to save space, and would have been completely okay by me if they'd not managed to forget that they'd been moved at all, let alone when or where to...
posted by BungaDunga at 1:40 AM on November 24, 2015
Family member still claims no memory of moving them! It must have been to save space, and would have been completely okay by me if they'd not managed to forget that they'd been moved at all, let alone when or where to...
posted by BungaDunga at 1:40 AM on November 24, 2015
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Among competing hypotheses related to family members and technology, your family member was always the culprit.
In all seriousness, did you create a separate user account for your other family member? If so, did they have the password for your user account? If your family member used your user account, or had access to your user account, it sounds like they, or someone else they know inadvertently deleted them. The good news is, there is a good chance that these may still be recoverable. Check your trash can. If they aren't in your trash can, launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and select the file types you want to recover. Select the disk where you lost your data and click "Scan" button, the software will quickly scan the selected disk to find all your target files.
posted by arnicae at 6:32 PM on November 21, 2015 [4 favorites]