What Happened
I was going through my files on my mac when I noticed that one of the folders for my vaults was out side of the actual Obsidian folder which I thought was weird because all the rest of my folders were in there, so I just dragged over the folder and moved it in. When I went into the Obsidian folders to check on it, it just wasn’t there - it disappeared. So I searched up the folder in Finder and the folder was there but nothing was in it. And then I actually went onto Obsidian to open the vault it gave me the message “Failed to open”. What do I do?? I just lost years of work and information that was stored in that vault.
So this is MacOS?
So first of all, a bit more information: What do you mean by “the actual Obsidian folder”? Are you storing your vault in iCloud? Or any other syncing tool? Obsidian Sync?
I mean the actual folder for Obsidian - that’s where it has been saving my vaults. I do not have Obsidian sync turned on because it won’t let me login and it also won’t let me reset my password.
Did you purchase Obsidian Sync? If you didn’t, that’s perhaps why you can’t login.
There is no “actual folder for Obsidian”.
If you’re storing it in iCloud, it can make a folder like that with an icon. Otherwise, you can choose any folder at all for your vault. If you are storing it in iCloud, that’s important to know and clearly distinguish, so we can figure out what’s going on, and why the files disappeared.
And if you’re storing it in iCloud, you might be able to recover your files through iCloud. I’m not sure the best way. You might have to log in to iCloud on the web: Recover deleted files on iCloud.com - Apple Support (CA)
If you are syncing to any other devices, maybe you can disconnect from the internet before it syncs the files disappearing, and make a backup from the other device?
I hope you can get your files back! I know this is the worst time to hear this, but it’s important to keep backups of your important data. Syncing tools are not the same thing as safely backing up.
Update: All my files are still on my computer but they’re really spread out and they refuse to go back into their original folder for some reason. I’ll just have to remake the vault but luckily I still have my files. Thank you!
Please make sure you copy a backup of your files before moving them around and organizing them. Zip them up safely in a copy somewhere.
Glad you found them. Keep good backups!
1 Like
