Windows 10: Missing almost all files in Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos after...

Hello fellow redditors. I have a weird problem with my PC and missing files, to the point where after hours of google searching for a working solution, I am posting here with hopes for a good solution.

Today I de-dusted my longtime PC (8 years and still going strong!) and installed a new hard drive to prepare to transfer data from one that is starting to reallocate sectors. I also removed a failed hard drive and a DVD writer on it's way out to de-clutter the PC. Doing all of this required I do some SATA cable management, but I do believe I plugged them back all in the correct order.

So in terms of drives connected to my PC pre-clean up, I had:

• 1 Blu-ray writer
• 1 DVD writer - going bad
• 1 Samsung SSD - boot drive c:
• 1 Seagate hard drive - going bad (documents, downloads, music, pictures, videos, and cloud services drive) d:
• 1 micron SSD - games drive e:
• 1 Western Digital - dead

Post-clean up:

• Blu-ray writer
• Samsung SSD - boot
• Seagate hard drive - going bad
• micron SSD
• New larger Seagate hard drive - to replace the other Seagate

Ok, so I boot up after the cleaning, PC posts fine, Windows loads up... and Dropbox tells me it can't locate the folder it syncs with, which is on the old Seagate hard drive. Also, all the icons for games on my desktop and task bar have turned into blank sheets. I open up File Explorer and the old Seagate and micron SSD drives are empty upon opening them. Everything else is in regards to my Samsung SSD boot drive is fine.

I checked the event viewer and found that both drive had a "Device not migrated" error. After doing a bunch of things from various googled solutions, I found that running error check and letting it repair the drives got all the files on the micron SSD to show up and corrected the blank sheet icons back to their original icons, with everything working as normal.

The old Seagate hard drive got back my Dropbox and Amazon cloud files without having to re-sync, but my Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders are all empty. I tried restoring those folders back to their default location back on the Samsung SSD, rebooting a bunch of times, uninstalling then resintalling the drive, and logged in as administrator and still no luck on being able to see or locate the missing files. Also, I am 100% sure that those files are not deleted because they are still taking up significant space on the old Seagate (100+ GB of files). I don't have anything else on that drive other than the files mentioned.

My problem is that I can't see the files in any of those folders even though they are there occupying space. It's an extremely weird and frustrating problem. I want to image this drive so I can migrate to the new Seagate drive I installed and get that old drive out of there. But I want to make sure that I can see the files in their respective folders before I do the migration.

Any good suggestions on what I should try next?

submitted by /u/StBookwalter
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:)

 

Downloaded files disappear


When you download a file through any browser, there's an option somewhere to 'Open Containing Folder.'

In Windows, to find a file you have downloaded...

1. Open your personal folder by clicking the Start button and then clicking your user name at the top of the Start menu's right pane.
   
2. Double-click one of the following folders:
   
   • Downloads
     
   • Documents
     
   • Pictures
     
   • Videos
     
   • Music

If you do not see the file you are looking for, but know its file name, you can search for it by following these steps:
To search for a file you have downloaded...

1. Click the Start button
   
2. Type all or part of the file name into the Search box.
   The file you are looking for will appear in the list of results.

 

What exactly are are "My music", "My Pictures" and "My videos"

You can't redirect the shortcut links which is the subject of the post

 

What exactly are are "My music", "My Pictures" and "My videos"

The link has the following advice that, of course, does NOT work in Win10 !

Workaround

If the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos links in the Start menu do not point to the Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders, you must manually redirect these links to the correct folders. To redirect these links, follow these steps:

1. Click Startthe Start button , right-click the link, and then click Properties.
2. On the Location tab, replace the wrong target location with the correct target location. For example, to redirect the My Music folder to the Music folder in Windows Vista, enter %systemdrive%\Users\user_name\Music.
3. Click Apply.

If this was a fix for Vista, it seems kind of sloppy to keep it around !

- - - Updated - - -

If you CHECK THIS BOX they disappear.