#1

Things I have tried

What I’m trying to do

oddity: today i opened Obs, but my vault didn’t even show on the list; i opened it manually and discovered that - for the 2d time this year - all data & folders had disappeared after about Apr12, even from TimeMachine backups! i’d recreated missing data from a TM backup of the prior day, back in May, but to see the same issue, and again involving any backups since 4/12, is frustrating and incredibly perplexing. i use only iCloud (not git), and have a completely separate folder & vault for the mobile iOS apps, which does not seem affected. the only thing i recently did (would never’ve imagined it would affect data), is turn off the use of all external plugins so i could begin experimenting w/ how they might interfere with one another. does disabling them actually delete their data??

#2

Have you ruled out HD/SSD issues?

#3

Time Machine backups spread across 3 separate hard drives. main-use drive is a separate SSD. no problems reported in any via Disk Drill or Disk Utility. BackupLoupe doesn’t (as far as i know) check for Time Machine errors, but it shows no error messages. i’ll re-check everything, tho…

#4

When looking in Time Machine, did you go to the standard iCloud Drive folder, not the version in Library?

#5

yes—the iCloud folder is the only one i ever look at (is there a reason to check the Library data? i’ll look there in any case just to investigate it…)

#6

I am very curious about how Obsidian could be able to wipe out Time Machine backup data. This would seem impossible to me, since backup data lies safely on a separate disk (usually, that is).

I am also puzzled by the fact that this only affects backups since April 12th, and only backups of the vault and no other files.

Time Machine has its very own file structure, and in order to delete only a specific set of files (your vault) from the backup, and only back to a specific time (Apr 12), would require quite specific search and delete operations via Time Machine AFAICT.

What might have happened (but I am only doing wild guesswork here):

When TM cannot reach the backup disk, it creates local snapshots until the backup disk becomes available again.
UNLESS, however, you have disabled local snapshots for some reason.
Now let’s assume that TM was unable to reach the backup disk since April 12th, and it also created no local snapshots.
And then, something happens and the files in your vault get erased. As a result, the actual files are gone, and the TM backup has no backups since April 12th.

So I would treat the vanishing of local files separately from the non-existence of backups since Apr 12th. Maybe there are really two different reasons for that.

#7

yes, markdown—it makes no sense at all to me, unless there is some other odd glitch with my hard drive itself, but no other files have been affected, and i have been able to recreate the relevant files (originally created in Drafts) using TM backups (of Drafts) from the relevant period :man_shrugging:t2: i thought it might be due to DevonThink interacting with those files, but DT is not set up to duplicate or even index the missing files or any missing subfolder, so i’m again at a loss… :man_shrugging:t2:

#8

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