Vista File loss.

[AustinRoepke]

Hello, again. I decided to install Vista Beta. Well, I choose to update my XP to Vista option in installation, and everything installed fine. But, when I looked at the 'Documents' folder, only some of the files were still there! I have about 2,000 pictures in a folder in 'My Pictures'. Now, I have the folder, but no files inside! Where did they go? Has anyone else had this problem and did they find a solution.

Thanks,
Austin Roepke

 

[Nothinman]

You decided to upgrade your entire system to a beta release without backing up your data first?

 

[AustinRoepke]

I forgot about my pictures.

 

[Nothinman]

Well if they really were deleted and you want to try recovering them you need to stop using that drive immediately. Find some data recovery software (sorry, I've got no recommendations) from a different machine and give that a try.

 

[AustinRoepke]

Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm using a 160g drive, so hopefully they're still there. Anyone have suggestions for good data recovery software?

 

[AustinRoepke]

Well, thanks Nothingman. I used Recover My Files and it found a directory (c:\lost files) on my computer that the Vista installation created-and deleted. For some reason, every time I do something-even the smallest thing- to my computer, someting catastrophic happens. But, so far, nothing unfixable. The funny thing is, I just installed a DVD burner a few days ago to prevent something such as this. Well, I'm definetly going to put it to use backing up my files tomorrow.

Well, that could've been worse.
Austin Roepke

 

[Jeff7181]

I've been told upgrading XP to Vista is a bad idea unless you're using a FAT formatted hard drive since XP uses NTFS 5 and Vista uses NTFS 6 and will automatically upgrade any NTFS 5 drives to NTFS 6, which can take a considerable amount of time on a drive with a lot of data on it. Vista leaves FAT formatted drives alone. So for best results, perform a clean install.

 

[Nothinman]

I've been told upgrading XP to Vista is a bad idea unless you're using a FAT formatted hard drive since XP uses NTFS 5 and Vista uses NTFS 6 and will automatically upgrade any NTFS 5 drives to NTFS 6, which can take a considerable amount of time on a drive with a lot of data on it. Vista leaves FAT formatted drives alone. So for best results, perform a clean install.

Do you have any proof of this? Everything I've read seems to say otherwise and all of those people dualbooting XP and Vista seem to agree with that.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I've been told upgrading XP to Vista is a bad idea unless you're using a FAT formatted hard drive since XP uses NTFS 5 and Vista uses NTFS 6 and will automatically upgrade any NTFS 5 drives to NTFS 6, which can take a considerable amount of time on a drive with a lot of data on it. Vista leaves FAT formatted drives alone. So for best results, perform a clean install.

Do you have any proof of this? Everything I've read seems to say otherwise and all of those people dualbooting XP and Vista seem to agree with that.

Proof that this is what I've been told? Ummmm... I guess not... I didn't tape record the conversation...

 

[Nothinman]

Proof that this is what I've been told? Ummmm... I guess not... I didn't tape record the conversation...

Proof that it's true, because otherwise the anecdotal evidence that Vista and XP can dualboot without any problems seems to disprove it.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Proof that this is what I've been told? Ummmm... I guess not... I didn't tape record the conversation...

Proof that it's true, because otherwise the anecdotal evidence that Vista and XP can dualboot without any problems seems to disprove it.

Disprove what?

 

[Nothinman]

Disprove what?

That Vista upgrades NTFS filesystems in some new way, if that were true XP would have issues running on the new filesystems.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Disprove what?

That Vista upgrades NTFS filesystems in some new way, if that were true XP would have issues running on the new filesystems.

Oh... I didn't realize that's what you were questioning. Yes... I guess I do have proof then...

Transactional NTFS on Wiki
Transactional NTFS on microsoft.com
WMV - Surendra Verma discussing NTFS TxF 2 years ago

*EDIT* As I understand it... it's used for Shadow Copying à la Server 2003.

 

[Jeff7181]

As far as doing it automatically... that I don't know... but that's what I was told. Since it appears TxF is what's require for Shadow Copying, I assume if Shadow Copying is enabled by default in Vista, then an NTFS partition that was formatted with Windows XP would have to be "upgraded" when Vista is installed.

 

[Nothinman]

I can't find any detals on how the TxF support is actually implemented in Vista but most sources seem to say that it's still NTFS 3.1 and is perfectly compatible XP SP2. This tells me that they're either using an alternative file-stream for per-file transactions or one large transaction log in a new hidden system file, either way previous versions of Windows can mount the filesystem and use it just fine and the extra steams or file will be ignored.

 

[Jeff7181]

He talks about it in great detail in the video... it's long, but if you really want to know that'll probably tell you.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
He talks about it in great detail in the video... it's long, but if you really want to know that'll probably tell you.

mm... at 30 seconds into it he says it's not a new filesystem.

Shadow copies are the result of the VSS service that is present in XP, 2003, Vista.

The real reason XP upgrades are so much slower than direct Vista installs:
New installs simply drop an image on the box. Upgrades have to do the old XP-style file by file copy.


...so Shenanigans on a new filesystem.


As for the original OP:
Check permissions!!!
Many folders in vista have List Folder Contents set at Everyone-Deny. I'm betting your files are perfectly fine. Vista also moved them to c:\users\youruser\pictures rather than c:\documents and settings\youruser\my documents\my pictures (lots easier to navigate eh? )

 

[Nothinman]

mm... at 30 seconds into it he says it's not a new filesystem.

Well to be fair they probaby would have said the same thing about the changes made to NTFS in NT4 SP4.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

mm... at 30 seconds into it he says it's not a new filesystem.

Well to be fair they probaby would have said the same thing about the changes made to NTFS in NT4 SP4.

No actually they wrote lots of KBs to the contrary. A big overhaul to ntfs between windows versions doesn't really slip under public radar

 

[AustinRoepke]

I'm booting only Vista, and I'm guessing it's NTFS 5. I was able to restore some image files from deletion in the process of installing windows. If the drive was reformatted, I probably wouldn't have recovered the files. (~1800 files and 4gb of space recovered on a 150g formatted drive).

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: AustinRoepke
I forgot about my pictures.

That's why I always recommend making FULL SYSTEM BACKUPS of your PC. I've seen too many people "forget" about something important when they do make a backup. If you back up the entire system, you are SURE you have everything. A 400GB hard drive costs around $100 nowadays. Most folks can make several backups of their entire system onto a 400GB hard drive.

----------------------------------------
A computer bedtime story:

One client asked me to restore their old Calendar events in a "shared" Outlook .PST file. It was a law office, and not having those old Calendar entries was going to cost them a LOT of money.

First, sharing a .PST file is playing with fire.....and either Outlook got confused, or else somebody intentionally deleted the old Calendar events.

They had a backup. But whoever configured the backups had decided to "save" space and only backed up the "My Documents" folder. Unfortunately, somebody had moved the .PST file elsewhere on the hard drive. So they had no backups at all of any of their email, contacts, or calendar.

 

[Nothinman]

No actually they wrote lots of KBs to the contrary. A big overhaul to ntfs between windows versions doesn't really slip under public radar

AFAIK the NT4 SP4 thing wasn't a major overhaul and wasn't a new filesystem.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
He talks about it in great detail in the video... it's long, but if you really want to know that'll probably tell you.

mm... at 30 seconds into it he says it's not a new filesystem.

Shadow copies are the result of the VSS service that is present in XP, 2003, Vista.

The real reason XP upgrades are so much slower than direct Vista installs:
New installs simply drop an image on the box. Upgrades have to do the old XP-style file by file copy.


...so Shenanigans on a new filesystem.


As for the original OP:
Check permissions!!!
Many folders in vista have List Folder Contents set at Everyone-Deny. I'm betting your files are perfectly fine. Vista also moved them to c:\users\youruser\pictures rather than c:\documents and settings\youruser\my documents\my pictures (lots easier to navigate eh? )

Never said it was a new file system... all I said was that I heard changes are made to the file system when Vista sees an NTFS partition and that the best way to avoid issues with that is to do a clean install. As far as I can tell, changes ARE made to the file system (ie. the file system created by Vista could not be mistaken for a file system created by XP because of the Translational feature added by Vista)... and the other part is my opinion so

 

[Smilin]

It doesn't make changes to the filesystem.


The slower install time is the result of not using an image during setup.

 

[Nothinman]

(ie. the file system created by Vista could not be mistaken for a file system created by XP because of the Translational feature added by Vista)

Sure it could, especially since we don't know how the transactions are implemented in the filesystem.

It doesn't make changes to the filesystem.

It has to, there has to be some method in the filesystem to support the atomic transactions.