#1

I started using Obsidian a few weeks ago and since the beginning I had the same problem as this person. I didn’t really have a need to access the vault directly, so I just ignored it and have been using Obsidian normally.
I had no problems until yesterday when my folders started getting deleted on their own. I can’t find it on the trash and I can’t even look in the vault directly because I can’t access it. I can still see in the graph view where some other pages led to ones in the deleted folders but when I click on them it says ‘no such file or directory’. It seems like every other time I open Obsidian I have one less folder.

#2

Many things can be at play here.

  1. What’s your OS?
  2. Do you have any community plugins installed?
  3. Is the vault in a synced folder?
  4. Do you use any automation app like Hazel?
  5. Are there any special, non alphanumeric characters in the folder names?

If you answer “no” to questions 2–5, I’m out of ideas, and maybe you should file a bug report.

#3

what is your vault name and where is it located?

What is your exact OS version?

what is your filesystem? NTFS, FAT, etc?

#4

My OS is Windows 10, but I don’t have this problem when I use Obsidian in my computer that has Ubuntu. File system is NTFS.
No plugins, it’s not in a synced folder, no other app, and the name of the vault is Theology Research, no extra symbols. It’s located in a folder on my desktop that also has the same name.

#5

Can you access the directory from the command prompt?

#6

Do you have an antivirus active?

#7

Do you have OneDrive installed? Or if it is built into Windows, do you have it configured?

This is an unrelated link, below. But it seems to hint to me that OneDrive can be configured to sync your Desktop folder. Are you absolutely sure you don’t have any syncing software that might be controlling your Desktop folder? I’d check OneDrive settings and see if your Desktop folder is checked on.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start-win_desk/windows-10-saving-desktop-inside-of-onedrive/c6e12406-9ddf-40c5-b324-ef39b1f30241

I wouldn’t ever use my Desktop to store anything important. In Windows and MacOS, they seem to be treated as special folders. In MacOS for example, by default the Desktop folder is inside iCloud and is synced. I’m not 100% sure on Windows.

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#8

I couldn’t access it from the command prompt and even after disabling my antivirus I still couldn’t access it.
I’m 100% sure I don’t have any syncing software, I even checked it again and nope, nothing.
I made a new test vault and the first time I wasn’t able to access it too, but on the second try it seems to be working fine and none of the folders in the second test vault are being deleted.
I still can’t delete the inaccessible vaults though, it says their location can’t be found. I suppose if the third vault works then it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Thanks for the help guys!

#9

I have looked into those types of errors and I couldn’t wrap my head about what causes them. You may have a broken window. I don’t know. Be carefull. Let us know if you figure it out.

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