I synced two folders, a backup folder for my general stuff and one for my authenticator with a single folder on my PC.
Now I’ve lost my general backup which obv had very important stuff. I have no idea why it decided to delete one of 'em but keep the other–especially the more important one.
Unfortunately I didn’t set it up to have multiple versions.
So now I’m just looking for a way to get back my file, it’s been ~48 hours since.
I’ve already tried getting the file back via Photorec on my PC, with no such luck.
Now I’m just wondering if there is a way I’ve not thought of using my Android or Syncthing’s app.
Yeah, so the main problem here is that Syncthing is a file synchronisation application, not a backup tool. It can be a part of backup strategy, especially with file versioning enabled, and it does provide data redundancy, e.g. if the device itself breaks or gets stolen, but it’s by no means a full-fledged backup solution.
At this point, the question seems more about recovering deleted files in general rather than being specific to Syncthing. There’re various applications designed for that, and they will differ depending on the OS. I can only say that if the data was indeed very important, the standard procedure in such a case is to turn off the device immediately, and then move the drive to a different system and try to recover the data from there, making sure that nothing else is written to the drive in question.
The only “backup” that Syncthing provides is file versioning. If that hadn’t been enabled, I don’t think there’s anything it can do to help with recovering the files here, unfortunately.
I see, thanks for the response. I’ll keep trying different file recovery software to try unfuckin’ my situation, heh. I mainly kept my file on my android phone (temporarily at least) got any ideas in terms of software I could use for that?
Android is probably going to be very tricky (see https://forum.f-droid.org/t/deleted-files-recovery-app/9337). I’d assume you’d need to use Linux command line tools for that, and at least have root access, as otherwise there’s no way to access the filesystem directly.
