Recovering deleted files

[hiro_hamada]

I thought I have a good backup solution but I just learned it hard way it's the stupidest setup ever.

I'm paying 2TB iCloud Drive and I keep my files there.

I'm paying 1TB Creative Cloud storage and I sync my files (raw photos) from iCloud Drive with Ligthroom, therefore they are automatically synced with CC.

I'm also paying Backblaze to backup my whole hard drive.

I just realized some files are missing. I have no idea when and how was they deleted, but they are not on my iCloud Drive. Lightroom says files are missing there's nothing in the Backblaze backups. The thing is all three services just sync the current state of the hard drive, unlike old good Time Capsule that makes images of your HDD every time you make some changes.

This is the first time in years that I need a backup to recover something. And I don't have it, despite paying three services for years. It'd be smarter if I invested that money into good raid system and avoid cloud.

I suspect, although I cannot gurantee, that something went wrong with iCloud and that the files were simply not synced and deleted from all devices automatically. Lightroom recognizes the path and says it's missing from the iCloud. I don't know but it's 5-6 really big TIFF files, each above 1GB, all in separate folders so there are almost zero chances I deleted them by accident, even drunk, high and tired at the same time.

Anyway, if you have any idea what I can do to try to find missing files please let me know.

 

[HDFan]

Can't give you much comfort. There are disk utilities that can attempt to recover deleted files. But as disk space is reclaimed and reused as time goes on the blocks are over written and lost

I have been working for months fixing Lightroom which at one point told me I had 10,000 missing files. I have the number down to 2500 but it is a long process. I first tried the backup services, but they only keep deleted files for a short period of time. If their retention policy is 30 days (Backblaze) then if you don't notice that the file is gone after 30 days it is toast. If you have a large picture library you may go years before you discover you have missing files. I've learned my lesson and will be checking for missing files in Lightroom more frequently.

Backblaze has a way to specify a longer retention period for deleted files, but give the large size of my multi terabyte archive it is cost prohibitive. Luckily I have been sportically making backups of my pictures to hard disks over the years so right now I am going through them trying to find the lost files. My best results are from a disk which I stored off-site some 10 years ago.

 

[BrianBaughn]

You've learned a couple of things. One is that Creative Cloud and iCloud are not backup systems. The other is that BackBlaze is a limited offsite backup system and should be used as supplemental to local backups (in case of local disasters).

Hope you're able to work it out!

 

[smirking]

Give the demo of Data Rescue 5 a try:

Prosoft Engineering, Inc.

Prosoft Engineering Inc, offers software to undelete your important files, detect malware, monitor your computer, and create backups.

www.prosofteng.com

I don't know if the demo will allow you to recover the file though, but if it finds the file and you want to get it, Data Rescue 5 is currently being offered as a "free" program if you ugrade a copy of Parallels.

 

[chrfr]

The thing is all three services just sync the current state of the hard drive, unlike old good Time Capsule that makes images of your HDD every time you make some changes.

You can specify earlier dates, up to 30 days back by default, in the Backblaze restore interface.

 

[hiro_hamada]

It must be deleted a way before since there's nothing on Backblaze. And if it was deleted more than 30 days ago, I don't think there are chances to recover files with these disk recovery utilities. In theory this might be deleted 6 months ago, but I didn't notice it because I didn't have a need to use these files, until now.

The scary part is that neither of these systems has a way to properly inform you what is deleted, so if files are deleted unintentionally, there's no way to know.

 

[jetsam]

Not helpful to your current situation, but I use the backup program "arq." It uses an algorithm similar to Time Machine, so that some backups going back months (or even years) are kept. My oldest backup is from July 2018, with weekly backups until Jan 28 of this year, when it went daily.

You control when (or if) your backups are deleted.

It backs up to most of the popular cloud services, as well as various physical devices, like external drives and NAS boxes.


This really did save my butt once, when I realized I had an important, but infrequently used, folder go missing. It turned out it somehow got deleted three months earlier. I did get it back, much to my relief.

 

[chrfr]

It must be deleted a way before since there's nothing on Backblaze. And if it was deleted more than 30 days ago, I don't think there are chances to recover files with these disk recovery utilities. In theory this might be deleted 6 months ago, but I didn't notice it because I didn't have a need to use these files, until now.

The scary part is that neither of these systems has a way to properly inform you what is deleted, so if files are deleted unintentionally, there's no way to know.

Yeah, disk recovery tools will be of no value in that time span.
I can't conceive of how a backup utility might be able to note and inform you of every file that's been deleted. It could literally be hundreds of files a day or more, depending on what you're backing up.

 

[hiro_hamada]

Not helpful to your current situation, but I use the backup program "arq." It uses an algorithm similar to Time Machine, so that some backups going back months (or even years) are kept.

Good to know, will try it.

I can't conceive of how a backup utility might be able to note and inform you of every file that's been deleted. It could literally be hundreds of files a day or more, depending on what you're backing up.

I know. I don't blame them, just saying it sucks that we can't know promptly if something important is deleted.