Missing documents from documents folder

[Chuckie]

First let me say that I'm not a newbie (definitely not an expert) with Linux and that I've run a few different distros in the past. About 2 weeks ago I decided to try Kubuntu again and installed 24.04 on a second SSD in my desktop. Twice in those 2 weeks I've had things disappear starting with settings I had made and twice now documents in my documents folder. Several of those documents I had backed up to other drives but a few of the newer ones that were mainly specific to Kubuntu I had not backed up yet. Today I had opened the documents folder and opened some docs there. Closed the folder to do some other stuff and came back to - an empty folder ! Using Dolphin and Catfish I searched the Home folder and then the entire system using the names of a couple of the files and there was nothing. Does anyone have any ideas about this or has it happened to you ?

[James the Third]

Hello Chuckie, I have been using Kub for over 15 years casually at home. Are you saying you lost individual files as you saved them?


Empty directories is not uncommon if moving large number of files with Dolphin. I have tried Files/Nautilus/Thunar/and Dolphin. Dolphin seems to be the worst with this issue, They all have their best points and are growing but for a file manager to loose files without errors is bad.

[TinyTim]

That is interesting, I have never had that problem. What kind of file is it? Is it a hidden file? You mentioned documents, what kind of document format? Do you have R-W-X file permission on that directory (Chmod) (Chown)? It would be unusual for it to not be Ext4, but just in case.... What is the drives format, is it NTFS, EXT4, Exfat, Vfat?

[oshunluvr]

Hello Chuckie, I have been using Kub for over 15 years casually at home. Are you saying you lost individual files as you saved them?


Empty directories is not uncommon if moving large number of files with Dolphin. I have tried Files/Nautilus/Thunar/and Dolphin. Dolphin seems to be the worst with this issue, They all have their best points and are growing but for a file manager to loose files without errors is bad.

Please provide links to reports of Dolphin "losing" files or leaving behind "empty directories."

Almost 30 years using Linux and 15 of that using Kubuntu and I've never seen a file manager "lose" files. Dolphin is arguably the best file manager available for Linux and I use it literally every day. Never once has it "lost" a file. Also there is no possibility that Dolphin can "change settings" of any kind.

IME, when issues like these occur, it's highly likely user error.

[Qqmike]

Agree with oshunluvr, word for word. (Kubuntu user for 17-18 years).

[Chuckie]

I spent some time this morning going through my Home directory and can find no more lost files. The file system I used when installing Kubuntu was 'btrfs' rather than ext4 as in the past and after installation added some applications that I wanted such as Timeshift, Nord VPN, Synaptic package manager and Chromium but nothing that I think may have led to the lost files. Checked system logs for anything unusual. But, after some brain storming, I wondered if I had done something myself to lose these files ... well, it's not impossible. So I restored the ones I had backed up to a separate drive so I'll see if this happens again. Thanks everyone for you help.

[oshunluvr]

If you're using BTRFS, then as soon as you'e restored those files, take a snapshot of your @home subvolume. Then if it happens again, you'll have the snapshot available.

Timeshift is a snapshot-and-restore utility. Your mysterious files disappearing and settings getting "lost" sounds an awful lot like Timeshift is reverting your @home subvolume to a previous state - i.e. before you added those files and made those setting changes. I suggest you either review all your Timeshift settings and configuration or remove it completely and see if you issue goes away.

[James the Third]

I just am going through it right now. Tell me the instructions for Dolphin to cut/copy and paste from sd1a to thumb drive. Without showing directories and some times files that are empty or corrupt without error?
One thing that has been different since I came to Ubuntu is the time it take to move files, I mean the clock, In windows it just happens and you forget about it. Do I have to wait until the clock is finished before I can do another file job?

sd1a is ext 4 ssd and thumb drives are FAT32 Sandisk this time.But it has happened HD to ext HD.
It has been happening across many different media and machines. The file types were general HOME files (Libreoffice and multimedia).

I sure would be very happy to start the new year with a reliable way to move files graphically. I was not using any addons. I was using KUB 24.04 all updates but PRO. But I have had this issue since KUB 18.04 and it seemed to go away when I moved to XFCE but I so love KDE.

No irregularities other than when I get behind in house keeping and have to move many files to archive, off line.

[James the Third]

Thank you for any help. I did not mean to bad mouth KDE. The issue was so pervasive with me, I thought it was accepted.

[oshunluvr]

The difference in the time you're seeing when moving files to a removable device can likely be blamed by Windows default behavior of caching disk writes for removable devices where most Linux distros default to not caching. That is why it is so important to "Eject" before pulling a USB stick when using Windows, where when using Linux it most often causes no problems as long as the file copy dialog has finished. So what you're seeing is not actually Windows copying it faster - just releasing the dialog before the copy is complete. The "eject" command is actually "sync and dismount" which completes the transfer.

Another possible cause might be file system configuration on the USB device isn't optimal for it. Frankly, ext4 is not the best choice for a removable device because there's too much caching overhead and reserved blocks (5% is reserved by default). I find it easier to use exfat instead of ext4 than taking the time to fine tune ext4. Also the bonus of exfat being windows compatible so you don't have to have "Windows" vs. "Linux" thumb drives.

Finally, check you mount options when you plug in a USB device. There may be adjustments to your UDEV setting that can improve performance.

Also, I'm not offended by anyone bad mouthing anything unless it's me, LOL. We all have our moments of frustration with any operating system. The trick is to dig in and solve the problem. WIth Windows or Apple, you can only shrug and say "I guess this is what I get"/

[James the Third]

I am sorry the USB is FAT32 and the sda1 is ext4. As far as adjusting UDEV, I have never made any changes. If the issue is user error my thought is to not handle large number of files or folders. I usually open two windows of a file manager and copy and paste between device folders
You mentioned exfat format, I have not seen that. And yes I do see the win format warning every time.