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The horror of… deleting files

This night, I was editing some images on my computer, when, all of a sudden, Photoshop refused to start. It told me it did not have enough disk space for something (which appeared to be something similar to swap memory).

When I saw this message, I did what was natural in this case: delete files I did not use anymore. However, I could not have expected how long this night would last.

After I found that deleting some files I did not need was not enough to get Photoshop up and running again, I thought it might be a good idea to clean up some old accounts left on my computer from before I migrated to Azure AD. What happened, however was that I accidentally not only deleted the data of old and unused accounts, but also of my own Windows account. 😭

This meant that, in a few seconds, all my user preferences and data were deleted. This, well, did not amuse me, even though this was not the worst. The worst thing I lost this night? That would be my WISeKey email certificate, without which I cannot currently logon to get that certificate renewed next year.

I tried all kinds of things to get that certificate back: running Recuva and using a tool called PhotoRec, until I came to the conclusion that the files are really gone. One lesson I certainly have learned now: take backups and store data in the cloud. Don’t be stubborn 😔, as it will only lead to more pain later on 😉.

Maybe I should be writing 'make a backup' down on my to-do list...

Now, there is one thing I still need to do: wait for my computer to finish copying over some recovered files (although I know I most likely will not get any information out of them).

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