All 2 months work gone for the second time

[KNilesh]

I tried a few of the recovery software but they are not very helpful in this situation. I think backup is the only way to be safe.

[Licat]

Sorry I’m late for a reply here. There isn’t much I can add, but I’ll summarize:

• On Windows, I’d recommend Recuva with deep scan mode on the entire drive you stored your notes on. There’s a chance you can get the file back partially or fully, but if you work on a primary drive like C: it’s also quite likely that your file has been overwritten by logs and temp files generated by the OS.
• Your notes are all local, while that’s all great for data security “nobody can steal it”, it’s unfortunately not any protection against data integrity.
• Even if Obsidian works perfectly, there’s always a chance something else (sync solution, text editor, other tools, hard drive corruption, laptop gets stolen) causes data loss. Accidents can also happen when one didn’t get enough coffee.
• Make sure you backup your notes - it doesn’t have to be sophisticated. Anything is better than nothing. Just making a copy of the folder, or creating a zip gives you a good start.
• Be especially careful if you’re going to use community plugins. While most of them are safe to use, there may be edge cases the plugin author isn’t aware of that could happen to cause data loss for your setup.

[ryanjamurphy]

Continuing to explore causes here.

@KNilesh

After that I opened today and it was blank.

I mean, specifically, how did you open it? The quick open? A link? Do you have any idea as to whether it contained data before you opened it, or if it was mysteriously deleted sometime between the edit the day before and when you tried to open it?

What other apps/services interact with these files?

[GreenChocho]

Did you have have the plugin “Extended MathJax” enabled and added some code the file “preamble.sty” before this happen?

This happen to me after I input the code to install additional package through preamble.sty.
The code was wrong and it messed with obsidian so i tried ctrl+r. Obsidian took much longer to load.
When obsidian done loading, the file would be empty (i checked the OS explorer, the file also show 0kb)

This problem happen 3-4 time that day until i delete that line of code from preamble.sty

[KNilesh]

@ryanjamurphy

I mean, specifically, how did you open it?

I used obsidian app pinned to the taskbar, and then selected the file.
I think it contained data before I opened it because when I opened it I saw that the scroll bar became short as if notes were loading, in the preview pane.

[WhiteNoise]

Possibly related:

Data loss - zero byte .md file in vault

macOS 11.2.1 Obs 0.11.3 (first noted in v0.11.2 however) Bug Over the last couple of days I have experienced total loss of a note’s data 4 times. Symptoms Working normally in a note for minutes, hours Quit Obsidian Later, re-open to find that the note’s contents are completely erased (only the Title remains) Inspecting the file in Finder shows a 0-byte file. There is no pattern I am aware of. This is making me increasingly nervous, as it now seems to be happening regularly. I know this bug …