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Windows 10 October 2018 Update is Deleting User Data For Many (windowscentral.com)
New submitter CaptainPhoton writes: I updated my test PC using the Windows 10 October Update (1809). That seemed safe enough, so I proceeded to upgrade my production PC. I just encountered an issue where everything in the Documents folder was deleted, even though I had clicked the option to keep my files. Everything else in my user profile remains intact. I am curious, how widespread is this issue? Has anyone else here encountered this issue? Some articles are starting to crop up acknowledging this failure. Citing complaints from several users, Windows Central reports: Sometimes, when you perform an upgrade to a new version of Windows 10, the setup may move the user files to the previous installation backup located inside the "Windows.old" folder. However, according to those users experiencing sudden data loss, they looked everywhere, and their personal files are nowhere to be found.
It could be argued that the initial fault was using Windows 10 at all ;)
But the part about the cloud backup was obviously sarcastic...
And to get serious for a moment, things like these are why I back up my files from time to time. I also have them outside the usual, Microsoft-designed scheme for storing user data. The original reasons were
- I want them close to the top level of the file system, not down below three more layers as in C:\Users\Lonewolf666\Documents.
- I want them on a separate partition I can copy as a whole, and that is not impacted if I nuke my C:\ drive for some reason.
But now I see they are much less likely to be hit by stuff like this as well. One more reason.
C - the footgun of programming languages
One of the theories floating out there is that it has something to do with being domain joined. Another theory is that it has something to do with OneDrive. The only resolution I've seen on forums is to run undelete software, otherwise the recourse is restore from last backup.
So the entire system is needlessly complex, otherwise these three things (local files, domains, a cloud service) wouldn't be tied together in such a way.
On my Linux systems I'd have to REALLY go out of my way to entangle those three things to that degree. And I still wouldn't have files going *poof* for mysterious reasons that can't be tracked down. Certainly nothing as trivial as a system update would cause something like this. This isn't something where you can say "ah well I see how a mistake could have done this". It's mind-blowing. What is the Windows updater doing that even allows this to be possible?
On Linux here's what a system update entails: unpack some archives, copy their files to the right places, update the package manager's DB. Maybe generate a new bootloader configuration, which happens automatically and is only necessary if there was a kernel update. The whole process can be put into the background and ignored while you continue using the machine like normal.
Apparently this process is FAR more complicated on Windows systems. That's remarkable considering the scope of Windows updates is far smaller (core system only) compared to what Linux package managers are updating. Amazing. Is the design of Windows really this broken?