The hard drive does seem to be stuck. And worse- if I have it connected with my OS drive? Both my OS and *BIOS* stall. So there is something very badly wrong. For a drive a year old? Okay. So I have the original drives and files I was organising and as much of a mess as it is- the files are intact. Except?

Now the 1TSSD I was working on got wiped. Wiped. No files in the recycle bin or anything. It shouldn’t happen but the big clue is that nothing wound up in the recycle bin and the drive is apparently ready to be a back up again. Lol to the no.

Okay so let’s try again, I attach my 1T external SSD and.

Files erased. Space indicated it was empty.

However, heavenly choir, they were at least in the recycle bin. Neither my recovery apps nor windows could restore them- they just appeared super confused. I had accidentally left that drive as exfat so I think I actually got lucky there. Exfat has no journaling so maybe it confused whatever the heck was going on? I do wonder if it’s related to drivers stored for all drives I’ve attached over the years.

But I can’t trust my laptop either. I took some screenshots of a video to share a new annoying feature on youtube. I chose save as and… both the screen shot and copy vanished. That’s my cloud drive. I tried just cropping a second one. Also disappeared.

Oh but it gets even better. I just started moving cloud to cloud at my PC and a folder full of *photos* had clearly been wiped. The folder structure is there. And I just checked- yes. Storage settings were changed so I think those files got deleted because I hadn’t looked at them in *checks notes* 60 days.

What? Just, what? Yes, because we never need to store our digital life for more than 60 days.

I’ve looked through all the files included in the latest update and there are many that could impact both the HDD (power settings) and my drives (storage settings.) Obviously these were all part of the OS, not something totally new. But I think the settings changed on me. I spotted some that I knew immediately.

So. That’s great. That’s just. Dandy.

I have no idea what in tech the default is irreversible destruction when both individuals and businesses need their data backed up permanently.

The update for sure is responsible for changing settings so I’m hanging out in support fora looking for any clue that this is on the cards for a patch. But I did also find this has been an issue in previous updates- specifically erasing SSDs. Pretty shocking. And that was just August *last year.*