Lost abundant local files during syncing

My Cloud Home - Personal Cloud Storage My Cloud Home
1

I saw the files on my local drive disappearing one by one during syncing. Only some random files are still left there. I can’t find the lost files on my My Cloud Home either. I am using MacBook and had updated the WD Discovery to the latest version v4.3.361. This is now a disaster to me. Need to recover the very important files as soon as possible. Has anyone encountered the same problem and could give me a solution?

Thanks a lot!

2

@pallam

What were the steps you took to sync your devices?
Sync Definition (techterms.com)

User Manual: My Cloud Home and My Cloud Home Duo (westerndigital.com)

Knowledge Base search results.
Search Support | Western Digital

3

@cat0w

Thanks for your help. I understand the definition of sync and followed exactly what the user manual said. I just right click the folder on my computer to sync the content of the folder. Then I started seeing some of the files disappearing one by one. I didn’t delete any files either from my computer or from my My Cloud Home. I suspect there is a flaw in the WD Discovery and automatically my files. Now I have lost my important files and really need to get them back. Hope there is a solution.

4

Unfortunately this is a common problem from sync conflict as you can read from this thread from 2018. You should always have three backups of your important data before trying sync on those data:

5

@NoPlex

Thanks for your suggestion. At this point of time, is there any way I could recovery my files. Such as would those lost files have been put into some hidden location?

6

@pallam
If you use Windows and you did a right click sync then your files probably went to One Drive. Have you checked it?

image

7

@cat0w I am using MacOS. Do you have any idea about it as well? Thanks.

8

@pallam
No, all my computers use Windows.

9

This problem is not unique to any one sync program, macOS and MS OneDrive has a similar but less severe sync problem with Files on Demand that is happening now.

For files that don’t change often, syncthing works, but for other files like todo lists, notes etc. that get changed on multiple devices before being synced, syncthing doesn’t know how to combine the changes and creates a conflict file. Here is one possible solution using git merge but it is not automatic

Assuming we have a simple syncthing folder containing a file called notes.md with the following content:

- I like markdown
On one node, I add a line at the start:

- I like syncthing
- I like markdown
On the other node, I add a line at the end:

- I like markdown
- I also like git
Once syncthing detects the conflict, it will create a .sync-conflict file, resulting in this directory layout:

├── notes.md
├── notes.sync-conflict-20200917-224540-5CYLJKE.md
└── .stversions
    └── notes~20200917-173218.md
We can now run git merge-file, providing version one, the common ancestor and then version two:

git merge-file notes.md .stversions/notes~<xxxxx>.md notes.sync-conflict-<xxxxx>.md 
after which notes.md contains the following:

- I like syncthing
- I like markdown
- I like also git
Alright! Git merged the three files without us doing anything!

https://www.rafa.ee/articles/resolve-syncthing-conflicts-using-three-way-merge/
10

@NoPlex Thank you for the information about the basics of synching, which I wish I would have know before I lost my files. Too bad it doesn’t tell how to recover the files I have lost…