Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything, how can I get it back?

[despina88]

Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

I upgraded to Windows 10 last night and I was assured that my files would be left as they were. Once the upgrade finished, I couldn't find them. I searched the forums here and located every file in C:/users/ and I went ahead and copied everything from there to this computer/ and deleted the old files because there was no space left on my laptop. Then I turned off my laptop and when I opened it again a few minutes ago everything was gone. Everything. My files are not located on this computer/ not are they where I first found them. ALL my photos from the past 2 years, ALL my music, ALL my documents, my papers, my stories....everything is gone. How do I get it back??

 

[Jozef jurcisin]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

Sorry that you lost data...
One think I can understand why the people keep all data on one drive for such a long time with out any backup!
All my documents are stored on Onedrive, photos and music too and usb flash drive.

 

[xandros9]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

Have you poked into the Windows.old folder? I doubt they'll be there but I remember reading something like that some time ago.

 

[despina88]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

Yes, I did. They're not there, unfortunately. I checked every single file but there's no trace of them at all.

 

[damonator98]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

Don't use the computer !! Try to bring the hard drive to some company which does file recovery in your region. There could be a whole lot of reasons why this happened, but let's start with the most simple one: are you sure that you deleted files from the old folderand not from the new one ? Also .old is the place to look

 

[damonator98]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

Since you replied, I see that it's worse than I thought

 

[LastBattle]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

You probably selected it wrongly... files wont be missing when you 'upgrade'

 

[v535]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

I upgraded to Windows 10 last night and I was assured that my files would be left as they were. Once the upgrade finished, I couldn't find them. I searched the forums here and located every file in C:/users/ and I went ahead and copied everything from there to this computer/ and deleted the old files because there was no space left on my laptop. Then I turned off my laptop and when I opened it again a few minutes ago everything was gone. Everything. My files are not located on this computer/ not are they where I first found them. ALL my photos from the past 2 years, ALL my music, ALL my documents, my papers, my stories....everything is gone. How do I get it back??

Did you skip the part where w10 asks you to setup docs, pictures etc from old windows install to w10?

 

[KatyaMT]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

THis is incorrect. I followed the upgrade instructions to the letter. I lost all of my pictures, and all of my files.

 

[KatyaMT]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

I think this is more common than not. I experienced the same problem as you....it's more than a little frustrating that Microsoft allowed this to happen. All instructions and prompts were followed precisely. Big mistake to download Windows 10. Apparently, no one knows how to remedy this, or there is simply no way to fix it.

 

[ajayden]

During the install/upgrade process there is prompt to ask whether to keep the existing files or install as a new computer. Did you select install as a new computer? If not, it would definitely leave all the personal files untouched. Which OS did you upgrade from?

 

[raycpl]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

One of my principle is always keep a redundant backup elsewhere (cloud or external drives)... better safe than sorry...

 

[julianich]

hello, you can use KrojamSoft FilesSearch to find the location where

 

[TechFreak1]

Re: Upgraded to Windows 10 and lost everything

I upgraded to Windows 10 last night and I was assured that my files would be left as they were. Once the upgrade finished, I couldn't find them. I searched the forums here and located every file in C:/users/ and I went ahead and copied everything from there to this computer/ and deleted the old files because there was no space left on my laptop. Then I turned off my laptop and when I opened it again a few minutes ago everything was gone. Everything. My files are not located on this computer/ not are they where I first found them. ALL my photos from the past 2 years, ALL my music, ALL my documents, my papers, my stories....everything is gone. How do I get it back??

Okay, can you elaborate what you meant by "Copied everything from there and to this computer".

Are you referring two to machines?

As you proceed to state "deleted the old files because there was no space left on my laptop. Then I turned off my laptop and when I opened it again a few minutes ago everything was gone".

So yes, clarification is needed.

 

[OneMoar]

data is gone(files might be recoverable with recuva but he will need a second drive)
never mess with c:\users you should have just copied what you wanted to anouther drive/computer and been done with it
what happened here is that op apparently attempted to merge the c:\users folder and windows didn't like that so it deleted it and recreated it

 

[timalan63]

Well KatyaMT, if you followed everything to the Letter then you should have your files...
I ran into problems with my wife's laptop, i was upgrading from windows 7 on my wife's laptop to windows 10 then when i went back to her laptop it was blank...so i tried to go back to windows 7, by going to settings and i tried to see if i could ger her laptop back to an earlier date and time but it wouldn't let me do anything, so after 15 hours of trying to get it to load up, the screen was just blank, so i thought why don't i try to close the lid on her laptop and i did, nothing happen so i tried it again letting it shut for 45 seconds when i open the lid it said we are getting your computer ready...and i closed it again and open it up and it said we are almost done...then i closed the lid again and waited about 30 seconds and when i open the lid it was in windows..so i got it to load up...
But it kept refreshing every 30 seconds but i fixed that...i went to windows update and it had the one update that is the big update of the year, as of 2015 so i installed that and it fixed the refreshing...
I hope KatyaMT you do recover your files...
I am sorry that happen...
I wish Windows could do something about having updates so much and rebooting...someone told me Mac OS very seldom do that...
timalan63

 

[David Kitson]

I've had a few issues with RECUVA and Windows 10 of late - it doesn't work with all drives. That said, it locates and identifies the state of the file correctly - it just doesn't recover them without corruption.

Testdisk-7.0 does, and is still the best free recovery option that I've found - although from time to time, it can't recover directories on drives that have not been reformatted, and a reformat is required prior to complete file recovery ( interesting bug ? )

Active File Recovery seems to be the cheapest of the bunch of the registered applications - and has worked well for me - between that and Testdisk I managed over 99.99 recovery ( one file in around 15000 had been damaged ). Pretty good I thought.

Anyway, I hope this helps - Recuva goes through the motions, but fails under Windows 10 for me for some reason. No idea why - I logged the information with Recuva. Thought I'd mention it for anyone needing to recover missing files under Windows 10 - I hope they are still there -

David