I migrated my wife’s PC after a forceful Windows 11 update to Linux. I made a backup of her files by doing an rsync of almost the complete C: drive onto an external drive formatted with exFAT. This was a grave mistake.
After the Linux installation we noticed that several files were missing and older files were back. My current guess is that I was somehow copying from an old snapshot instead of the current state.
I rsynced everything except for the Windows folder. Does anyone know if there is any chance of getting our filea back? Amd what actually happened?
Edit: After several weeks I finally found the answer. There are two drives in the laptop. But Linux didn’t see the NVME drive because it does not support “RST with Optane”. As soon as I switched the SATA mode over to AHCI I could see the system drive with the lost files.
I switched full time to Linux a few years ago for similar (but more embarrassing!) reasons, only leaving the dual boot for a particular software I needed for school (just got a solution for that, too, and finally uninstalled windows last night).
A couple years ago I got a message on laptop that my onedrive was full. “I have onedrive?” I says to myself.
“Apparently you do, self” self says back
I open onedrive, wondering what could possibly be on there, as I only use my laptop for two things, school and porn.
You can imagine what my onedrive was full of. Essays… And porn!
It was school onedrive.
I immediately go in and start deleting everything. Including the pictures that I had taken myself. Of myself.
I get an email from my academic advisor the next day. Deleting so much had sent up a red flag, and they had someone to check up on it, to make sure it wasn’t a hacking attempt or a virus or some such thing.
She wants to inform me that it’s not acceptable to use my school one for adult content.
I, in fact, died. You’re speaking with a ghost.