How about just adding a little caveat in BOTH of these instruction sets…along the lines of “Select everything, but be cautious to ensure you’ve inspected your Downloads folder FIRST, to make sure you’ve removed and/or re-located anything you worked hard to download AND plan to keep!”Īnd, sure, also include reminder at that time about how we were “bad boys and girls” to keep our things there in the first place. You even go so far as to DOUBLE DOWN on your advice to trash possibly needed/wanted downloads by repeating your advice to “once again, it’s just fine to select everything in the list to be cleaned up…Click OK, and Disk Cleanup goes to work” under the “Cleaning system files” heading. However, for those of us (the great “unwashed”) who DO have a tendency to leave downloads IN the Download folder (seems a pretty natural thing to do…based on the name of the folder AND the fact that MILLIONS of us DO IT), I don’t think we should be “punished” by being “encouraged” to intentionally DELETE our downloads….which is what your advice “My approach, however, is to select everything….Click OK” in the “Using Windows Disk Cleanup” effectively does. In the meantime, we get it advice well taken about “the Downloads folder should never be used for long-term storage.” You keep saying that, Leo, but as of today, January 8, 2020, on an updated Windows 10 OS………it’s still there! For instance, various disk cleanup utilities - including Windows’ own, shown above 1 - offer to empty it, or just empty it without asking (they should ask, but it’s easy to overlook if you’re in a hurry). The problem with Downloads is simple: I’m not alone in considering it inappropriate for long-term storage. Why is Downloads so risky? Disk cleanup utility – downloads folder setting. Since we don’t know why they disappeared, there’s little I can offer to prevent this from happening again - except, of course, not using Downloads for long-term storage, and making sure you begin backing up your machine right away. You may be out of luckĭifficult as it is to accept, it’s possible the files are gone forever. As a last-gasp effort, I’d try a file recovery tool like Recuva to see if the files can be recovered from the unused space on your hard disk. Visit and look at your OneDrive files there. Depending on your OneDrive account, it may have a File History or Recycle Bin you can check. If you’re using OneDrive, it’s possible that your Downloads folder will, ironically, be uploaded to your OneDrive storage. Assuming you have it enabled, see if you can locate the missing file(s) in Windows File History.Ĭheck OneDrive. This may also lead you to understand what happened and locate other files as well.Ĭheck File History. If the file was moved to a different folder, you might find it there. Try to recall the name of one file, and search for it using Windows Search or the Command Prompt. If they are, you can quickly and easily restore them. If the files were accidentally deleted by something you did in Windows File Explorer, or by a Recycle Bin-aware utility, it’s possible the file(s) you’re looking for could still be there. So, with admonitions out of the way, I have a few things for you to try.Ĭheck the Recycle Bin. If your Downloads folder had been getting backed up (as an image backup would have ensured), you wouldn’t have lost anything except the time to locate the backup copy and restore the file(s). My recommendation is a periodic image backup, with daily incremental backups, but the details matter less than just doing it. That’s true whether it was in the Downloads folder or anywhere else.Ĭhange that. If you lost a file because it disappeared, you aren’t backing up. If you lost anything, you aren’t backing up Perhaps create folders by topic, or whatever makes sense to you.īut move them somewhere else. Maybe create a “Utilities” folder in your Documents folder, maybe create a “Downloaded PDFs” folder somewhere. Instead, once you’ve downloaded something you intend to keep - anything - move it to a different folder of your own. You should never use the Downloads folder for long-term storage.ĭownloads was never intended as a place to keep things long term, and leaving things in the Downloads folder is a recipe for disaster, which you’re discovering. Downloads is for downloads, not for storage Regular backups will protect you from losing files, downloaded or otherwise.Move your files elsewhere after downloading. Don’t rely on the Downloads folder for long-term storage.
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