I have brought this subject up before, here and elsewhere, and the silence has been deafening. I am calling it to folks attention again because I can't believe this should happen, or can happen, but it HAS happened to me three times, the first time by disaster, the other times by me testing to see if it would do it again, and it did, each time.
I am hoping some brave soul will run a similar test and either not meet my own experiences, so I know it is a problem only on my machine and not 'normal', or finds the same thing happens and confirms it so that other folk do not suffer a disaster - and maybe someone asks Microsoft how this can be....
I am running XP Pro SP1. I wanted to claim back some hard drive space on each of my four drives, so I went to Disk Cleanup on each of the drive properties sheet General tab and clicked on the button.
First it compressed my 'old' files, which was fine, then it gave me the options of having files cleaned from two areas - recycle bin and the catalogue files for the contents indexer.
The amount of files reckoned to be compiled by the Indexer was enormous, but the blurb explained that these were files left over from a previous indexing operation and could be deleted safely - so I trusted the message and that is what I did, and I lost almost all of them.
In some cases the folders were left but with nowt inside, but the vast majority WERE deleted - the actual files, not some indexed list of files. Docs, applications, utilities, game sav files ( sob) - most everything except system files. It took 'old' stuff as well as a folder with updated docs in it that I had only just completed, and which I only managed to recover about two thirds of. I was horrified when I realised what had happened, couldn't believe it, so I backed up the few items I had left on my now wonderfully empty drive, and then set up the same operation - and again it took most but not all of everything, deleting some things out of the same folder as stuff it left, other places taking the lot. I did it again today, just to remind myself, and the same result.
How can this be? How can it say 'these files can be safely deleted' and then delete the majority without any further warning? It can't be meant to do this surely?
Please will someone else with more than one logical drive available have a go, after backing up of course, just to see if they get the same result.
I would really like to know for my own interests, but also to warn other folk not to tick the cleanup box for contents indexer if the same thing is going to happen to them...
Gracie
I am hoping some brave soul will run a similar test and either not meet my own experiences, so I know it is a problem only on my machine and not 'normal', or finds the same thing happens and confirms it so that other folk do not suffer a disaster - and maybe someone asks Microsoft how this can be....
I am running XP Pro SP1. I wanted to claim back some hard drive space on each of my four drives, so I went to Disk Cleanup on each of the drive properties sheet General tab and clicked on the button.
First it compressed my 'old' files, which was fine, then it gave me the options of having files cleaned from two areas - recycle bin and the catalogue files for the contents indexer.
The amount of files reckoned to be compiled by the Indexer was enormous, but the blurb explained that these were files left over from a previous indexing operation and could be deleted safely - so I trusted the message and that is what I did, and I lost almost all of them.
In some cases the folders were left but with nowt inside, but the vast majority WERE deleted - the actual files, not some indexed list of files. Docs, applications, utilities, game sav files ( sob) - most everything except system files. It took 'old' stuff as well as a folder with updated docs in it that I had only just completed, and which I only managed to recover about two thirds of. I was horrified when I realised what had happened, couldn't believe it, so I backed up the few items I had left on my now wonderfully empty drive, and then set up the same operation - and again it took most but not all of everything, deleting some things out of the same folder as stuff it left, other places taking the lot. I did it again today, just to remind myself, and the same result.
How can this be? How can it say 'these files can be safely deleted' and then delete the majority without any further warning? It can't be meant to do this surely?
Please will someone else with more than one logical drive available have a go, after backing up of course, just to see if they get the same result.
I would really like to know for my own interests, but also to warn other folk not to tick the cleanup box for contents indexer if the same thing is going to happen to them...
Gracie
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