The update process modified your entire storage device.
The update process modified your entire storage device.
In December the 27th I installed a Windows update that reformatted my entire hard drive, which contained 2 terabytes of work and family photos. Being a programmer, I lost a lot of my files. When I reached out to support, they delayed for a few days before transferring me to another agent, then another, and finally told me they couldn’t help restore my data and that I wasn’t entitled to compensation.
Hey, have you considered trying a software recovery tool or going to a data recovery service? Just enter the removal addresses, but if you lost everything, I'm sorry—it can happen with Windows sometimes.
I've been using it for navigation and checking updates since then.
It's surprising given that your hard drive was formatted. Recovery remains possible, though success rates drop to 30-60% for data. Long format recovery is more reliable, but files often get corrupted. Most filenames and folder details are lost, replaced by hex codes; renaming files can help restore them. With thousands of files, the process becomes extremely challenging.
It's curious that the data deletion problem was resolved when the service initially launched in 1809. It's frustrating to encounter this issue, though we can't determine the reason without details on the upgrade process. In the meantime, restore your files from backups and think about setting up Windows on a dedicated SSD for the operating system only. This would keep your data safe on the larger drive (plus any other backups), simplifying the reinstallation.