Pre-Restore Point Restore Point?

Over the weekend, when I booted, I got a message asking if I wanted to back up to One Drive. Well, I already have most everything synced with 1D, so I said "sure."

What it did, though, was take all my OTHER folders in a separate "Documents" subdirectory and MOVE those into my 1D folder and start syncing those. That's not what I want. (Links are now broken, etc...)

I was thinking doing a System Restore to the day before the reboot would take care of things... But I don't have any Restore Points older than yesterday.

Is there a way to trick the system into looking back even further?

Alonzo Mosley said:

Is there a way to trick the system into looking back even further?

Click to expand...

Older restore points are usually deleted after certain conditions, or when a new restore point is created. As far as I know. What you see is what is available.

This is why we encourage members to create “System Images” using something like Hasleo Backup Free or Macrium Reflect. I believe AOMEI also has one.

I've never tried that. Will look into it.

(What's doubly annoying is, every time I ever whinge about how One Drive behaves, some smartpants tells me, "It's a cloud sync, NOT a backup," yet their very material says "Want to backup?" Ugh)

As far as I know restore points only restore the system and not personal data. You need a backup to restore your files and folders. Or do you have a system image? That would also help if your data is on the system drive.

Alonzo Mosley said:

(What's doubly annoying is, every time I ever whinge about how One Drive behaves, some smartpants tells me, "It's a cloud sync, NOT a backup," yet their very material says "Want to backup?" Ugh)

Click to expand...

Take what you want and leave the rest, I always say.

I am partial to Hasleo, here’s a beginners guide for using it to make your first System Image


It looks like a lot, but it’s only because I wanted to make it as clear as I could.

altae said:

As far as I know restore points only restore the system and not personal data. You need a backup to restore your files and folders. Or do you have a system image? That would also help if your data is on the system drive.

Click to expand...

You could try it for yourself.

for example:

create a textfile on your desktop give it anyname you want

create a restore point

delete the text file

have a look in the shadow copy and see if the textfile is there on the desktop.

you can access the shadow copies with a little free portable program ShadowCopyView - Shadow copy viewer for Windows 10/8/7/Vista

or you can do it yourself with a simple batch file

Alonzo Mosley said:

was thinking doing a System Restore to the day before the reboot

Click to expand...

Other posters are correct. A restore point does not affect user data. Only restoring an image would get you back to where you were.

You can also try this, but you will probably end up having to do some file-sorting since you already had some data in Documents in onedrive.
Know that when you set backup to onedrive, your documents, desktop, pictures, and videos folders are all synced to onedrive if you checked them all.

Turn off backup folder syncing. This tutorial tells you how and also how to get your files onto your local drive.
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-onedrive-folder-backup-syncing-across-windows-11-devices.4321/
NOTE: ONLY IF FOLDERS DO NOT MOVE TO DEFAULT LOCATION IN STEP 1 ABOVE DO THIS

If this happens, then you could try option three in the tutorials below to restore the default folder location and move your files manually from Onedrive into the folders..

• Move or Restore Default Location of Desktop Folder in Windows 11
• Move or Restore Default Location of Documents Folder in Windows 11 Tutorial
• Move or Restore Default Location of Pictures Folder in Windows 11

Move or Restore Default Location of Videos Folder in Windows 11

ALSO NOTE: The files that are in Onedrive will stay there until you delete them. You can do that in onedrive on the web.

Unfortunately for the OP his first post indicates he does not have a shadow copy from before the problem. If he had he would be able to fish out whatever it is he is looking for.

Yeah, I know SR doesn't typically do file recovery, but since Windows played Rubik's Cube with my entire directory structure with the click of a button, I was hopeful that if I could "go back" to before that point perhaps my old setup would still be there. It was a long shot but figured worth a try.

Thanks

If you had a shadow copy from before the problem you could copy out out anything you want.

Alternatively an image can be made of a shadow copy for a complete restore.

It can be very useful, but that depends whether there is one from a useful date.

The usual suspects like macrium , aomei, hasleo etc can only image partitions/disks

To image a shadow copy either dism commands or wimlib commands will do. I have done it several times

for example if I want an image of this old shadow copy from 18 april




then this is the bit needed for capture command



instead of /CaptureDir:somepartitionletter

it is /CaptureDir:\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1\

Dism /Capture-Image /ImageFile:"K:\HarddiskVolumeshad1.wim" /CaptureDir:\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1\ /Name:HarddiskVolumeshad1

you can name the wim anything that helps you identify it call it yeeha.wim if you like

Or if you only want to see the contents of a shadow copy and maybe copy a few things out rt click it and select "open in windows explorer"