Restore deleted Vault 2025

Help
1

Hi community,

My computer (HDD) broke and I lost all my data. The main .obsidian folder with all my .md notes doesn’t exist anymore.
My only hope recovering it is that I had the sync functionality enable and I have a remote vault (on my Ipad).

My questions is, how to be able to “re-root” this intact remote vault to my new computer ?

I have a lot of work into this, before messing up with it, I was seeking good advices.

Windows 10

Thanks alot,
Charles C.

2

Hi there,

First, if you can, I’d suggest making a backup of your iPad just in case something goes wrong.

And then the instructions for connecting to a remote vault are here. I suggest reading through it all before deciding which option to follow: Set up Obsidian Sync - Obsidian Help

You’ll have to log in on your new desktop. Then you should see the list of remote vaults. The shortest summary is that you will simply connect to that remote vault, and download the data to your desktop.

You’ll also need to remember your remote vault password, which is separate from your Obsidian account. (Each remote vault has a unique password.) And if you don’t remember your remote vault password, since the data is still on your iPad, you would be able to upload that to a new remote vault. (Again, backup first just in case.)

And lastly, I super highly recommend you begin making backups of your important data. Syncing tools are not the same as good safe backups.

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Thanks for joining @rigmarole

Ofc I realize that I’ve mistaken Sync function in Obsidian to also be a backup option. A mistake I won’t make twice for sure.

To understand clearly the issue:

  • On my pc, one of my HDD is dead. it was where was located my core obsidian vault.(lets call it A)
  • Still, on another safe and sound SSD, I kept safe the remote obsidian vault (lets call it B) (that was a “copy” of the main vault… I thaught…)
  • On my Ipad, I have a vault (lets call it C)which is synced with this remote obsidian vault

Here is what I did / thought :

  1. So I thought I could simply copy this remote vault(B) as a backup. BUT it seems that this remote vault(B) isn’t the same exact copy as my core vault(A); many notes are missing, and other arn’t up to date. Is there a behavior I might not be aware of ?

  2. As my Ipad vault(C) is synced based on this remote vault, when I opened my Ipad unconsciously I forget that it would be synced to the remote vault(B). So I lost all progression I had on my core vault (A). I cheked file recovery plugin or sync plugin, no deleted files appears, nothing to bulk restore on my Ipad.

  3. On my PC tho, I loaded the core vault(A) from my backups (from 6 months ago), and in sync plugin, I saw in deleted files all the notes I’ve made since the past 6 month. I bulk restore them. BUT they never appeared back in my vault?!? what is this witchcraft ^^ ? Now they seems to have completly desapeared… Also, in file recovery plugin I can have snapshot of some of these deleted files, but they do not display all of them, I have to guess their name, in type it in the search bar… A list of all of them would be so helpfull. Any idea to get this info out ? I guess their not stored as .md notes but IndexedDB.

Anything to help me out from here ?
Regards,

CC

4

This isn’t accurate. You can’t store a remote vault. The remote vault is online. Obsidian Sync is a service which uploads your changes on any device, and then propagates/syncs/copies those changes to all your devices. (Obsidian has to be open and actively syncing for this to occur.)

The behavior you might not be aware of might be that Obsidian must be open and actively syncing for the changes to either upload or download. So if you had this vault on an external SSD, and that vault wasn’t open, no syncing would have been occurring, and it may have fallen out of date.

I guess it also depends by what you mean by “copy”. Did you manually copy the files to the SSD? Or was it another separate vault that was also connected to the Sync service and attached to the same remote vault? If you just copied the files, I doubt they ever synced at all. You likely just caught a snapshot of your notes at that time.

I’m afraid I can’t quite follow this point.

It sounds like you copied your vault from backups and then connected it to Sync. And so Sync thinks you deleted all the missing files, and will sync that deletion. I have no idea why bulk restoring didn’t work, because I’ve never used that feature.

Alternatively (and possibly the better option, but I don’t know, sorry) is that you likely should have made a fresh empty vault. Connected it to Sync. And then allowed Sync to pull down the entire remote vault. (Unless for some reason you knew that the remote vault was not the latest version.)

I know. Unfortunately File Recovery seems to be meant just for one-off files. The last I know, it doesn’t have any bulk options. I’m not sure if there is a way to access the full list.

As for that big list of deleted files, are you able to save that log? It might give you the list of missing files to work from, at least. There might be something you can still do with Sync’s bulk restore, but that’s beyond me.

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Indeed, I’m cluless of the “remote” folder I have on my PC stored under : C/users/username/documents. I thought it was obsidian sync that made a local copy of that remote folder at that location. The only possibilities I see, it was me in the past coping these folders, or an old obsidian sync behavior.

So I think I did what I could to retrive these files unsuccessfully.
Thanks for the help btw.

CC.