Windows 10: Windows reinstall lost me all program data

- reinstalled windows 11 from usb to fix unrelated issue. - chose to keep everything. - forced me to make a new profile when done. old profile I couldn’t access but the files were still there in windows.old. - fine. moved documents, desktop, photos, etc, to the new profile and program files, program files x86, program data to C:/ again. - launching apps they seem unable to access the old program data. - my old blender settings are reset and recent projects is empty- my old windows settings aren’t applied- my old wallpaper and colour scheme is gone- my old registry settings aren’t there- I’m lo

:)

 

Recover lost data from deleted/formated partition

anywhere you've written over files will be lost. try the programs mentioned above, and learn from this - back up data first, or seperate into different partitions. you only need to format C: to reinstall windows.

 

Why did the startup window get cleared?

I didn't missed any step, the list was gone and gone , even after using lot of programs the programs were not listed in that list.

 

Lost data from hard drive, what to do now?

Well, I'm sorry to hear that it's a WD My Passport that failed on you, @tomhenry ! *Frown
I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with it and see if that will help your system to detect it without it disconnecting.
I'd also suggest you to go to Disk Management and see how the drive is listed there. It won't hurt to check up on the health and SMART status of the HDD by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Here's a link to the available software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=11ZOpD

Give these troubleshooting steps a try and keep us posted with the results!
SuperSoph_WD