I could not sync my desktop vault to my laptop vault and instead accidentally synced my desktop to itself (but with a different name). When I tried to turn off the sync and get rid of the differently named vault, it deleted everything in my entire desktop vault.
Things I have tried
I did a system restore and got a vault with 2 empty files and an empty folder back. Searching for snapshots of files gives nothing but those empty files. I had kept the Obsidian vault out of my One Drive folders, so the files were not backed up there.
I definitely checked the trash can to no avail. Fortunately, I have the sync service, so I was able to reconstitute snapshots for the 10 most recently used files. A few hundred other files are lost, but those 10 are the most important, so I’m not as sad as I was last Saturday.
I have everything else on my machines set to auto backup on OneDrive, but I saved my obsidian vault outside of OneDrive because of the warnings about how that could mess it up. I got myself pretty confused with my obsidian syncing on itself (and creating an endless loop). It was a mess. And I did have a backup, but it was a few months old so not much help. However, I think that some of those older files that couldn’t be recovered via snapshots will be in that backup. As soon as I finish fully reconstituting the 10 main files, I will be able to pull some of those older files back in. And then I will definitely back everything up!!! Often!