Updating to Obsidian 1.0.3 seems to have overwritten my vault... :(

Help
1

What happened

Hello everyone. I updated Obsidian to version 1.0.3 this evening, and doing so seems to have overwritten my vault folder and everything in it. :frowning: I am choosing to post this in the ‘Help’ category instead of ‘Bug Report’ because I am unsure if I somehow caused this myself.

I started using Obsidian in the past week to record notes. I saved my markdown files to the default ‘Obsidian Vault’ folder, which Obsidian automatically created for me in my pc’s default ‘Documents’ folder. (I’m using Windows 10, and was previously using Obsidian version 0.12.19)

This evening I logged in and Obsidian prompted me to manually update to version 1.0.3. I downloaded and installed. Upon opening Obsidian I found that my ‘Obsidian Vault’ folder had been wiped clean, and all my documents were gone. It was replaced with a new ‘Obsidian Vault’ folder with a creation date of 11/13/2022 at 5:04 PM; This time exactly matches the time I installed the Obsidian update.

Things I have tried

Searching for my markdown files by file name in file explorer, and using Windows File Recovery, without success.

What I’m trying to do

I am 1. trying to restore the files in my old vault, if possible. and 2. requesting advice on how to prevent this from happening again. I find Obsidian easy to use, unique, and fantastically useful for holding complex ideas. I want to keep using it but I am scared that I will lose meaningful files again :frowning: Will creating an alternate folder to save my markdown files be safer? Was using the default vault folder a mistake?

Thanks for any help you can share. Have a lovely evening (or morning, or night, or afternoon, depending on where you are in the world! :earth_africa:)

2

This is not something that obsidian does.

Can you post some screenshot of your vault selector?

3

Do you mean the Sandbox help vault that has a bunch of welcome / tutorial notes in it? That does not save in your Documents folder (as far as I know). And it automatically resets itself. It is not meant to use for keeping notes. If there wasn’t a warning, latest versions of Obsidian will show a warning when using the Sandbox vault.

Otherwise, yeah any vault you create would have been manually created by you.

4

Thank you so much! This explains what happened. I feel embarrassed that I made this mistake :sweat_smile: I’m also relieved to understand what caused my files to be erased. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question!

5

np, sorry that happened to you! When you create a new permanent vault, make sure you keep backups too! Keep your data safe and good luck!

6

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