I changed the name of a folder and thought I copied all its subfolders into the new folder. However, I only copied over one of the several folders. Unfortunately, I erased the original folder’s subfolders. Syncthing dutifully synced the new folder (the one that only got one of the intended subfolders, and emptied the original folder of all it’s subfolders (because I had deleted them). Now I am missing several folders of important data. Syncthing is great, but when I goofed, it propagated my goof to three other machines instantly, and I am now in big trouble. Is there any way to retrieve the lost folders?
By the way, I’ve been trying to set up a cloud backup to avoid just such a foulup, but the the ones I’ve tried are maddenly complex and non-intuitive.
Complete recovery of the lost folders is going to take a combination of effort, possibly money – and definitely – luck.
To increase the odds in your favor, whichever one of the four machines is the least used, immediately power it off and do not turn it back on until there’s a plan for attempting data recovery. Every minute a machine is running reduces the odds of successful recovery.
Without more details about the operating system, type of drive (e.g. hard drive, solid state drive) holding the lost folders, file system holding the lost folders, etc. it’s difficult to offer specific suggestions.
Which ones have you tried?
What’s the most important factor? (e.g. cost of the software, cost of the storage, etc.)
If so, on one of the other systems in your .stversions folder (if/as implemented and/or named) you should find copies of your ‘gone’ directories/files.