I don’t remember if I changed the location of the previous vault, it could be the default location or I moved it to the obsidian software folder on the d-drive, after updating obsidian I accidentally chose to create a new vault and it created a new obsidian vault in the documents folder on the c-drive, which didn’t have my previous notes, I used the I searched ‘*.md’ and ‘.obsidian’ with ‘everything’, but I couldn’t find my previous notes, I also searched with recuva to see if they were overwritten. I also searched with recuva to see if it had been overwritten, but it didn’t come up either, nor in the system recycle bin, at the same time I noticed that my d-drive seemed to have some extra capacity (not sure if I’m remembering it wrong or not), I suspect that it was emptied directly during the update process and formatted directly by skipping the overwrite, I don’t know if there’s any other remedy for this, and I’m on a windows system, so I’m looking for help!
I don’t think there is a Default Location, you always have to enter a folder where you want the vault to be saved.
What operating system are you using? Depending on that, try searching for .md rather than with the star, otherwise it might be searching for a file with an asterisk in the filename.
Obsidian doesn’t really overwrite or delete anything during an update.
I also tried using “diskgenius”, but I couldn’t find it in the recoverable files, but I seemed to have found the storage path of my previous vault folder. The default vault file is the obsidian vault under “documents”. Because my C drive didn’t have enough space, I installed obsidian on the D drive, and then installed the vault file in the obsidian folder, which is d:/obsidian/obsidian vault. After the update, the entire vault folder disappeared. As for retrieval, I have used countless methods to basically confirm that I don’t have any previous note files on my computer.
Is d:/obsidian/ also where the app is installed? Obsidian normally won’t delete vaults when you update it, but if you stored the vault in the app’s folder, I imagine it might. It probably doesn’t expect any user data to be there.
I hope you can recover your files, but either way I strongly recommend setting up backups for the future (for all the data you care about, not just Obsidian). Back up your Obsidian files - Obsidian Help
I think this is a big bug in the design. The prompt file does not explain that the vault cannot be placed in the software folder, and it is not put into the recycle bin or overwritten, but completely cleared.
Have you checked Windows recovery options like System Restore?
If you don’t have any back-up at all of your D drive, System Restore on Windows, or back-up of your vault, then I’m so sorry that happened to you.
The docs say:
Don’t create a vault in the system folder. This may lead to corrupted data or data loss.
You accidentally, essentially made the place where you installed Obsidian and kept your vault… the folder that that statement is referring to.
I didn’t create a system restore point… Maybe I didn’t read the documentation carefully. I guess it’s really impossible to recover it…