recovery drive of W10 Home

I have decided, for 'just in case something happens', to make a recovery drive of my Windows 10 Home (version 10.0.19042) on a 32gb usb drive. In doing so, Windows has deleted most of my personal documents on the C: drive (mostly doc/pdf/xls), but not some of the ones on desktop. I have rolled back to a previous restore point, but couldn't get the files back. I have checked on the recovery drive-mounting the .iso on a virtual drive, extracting with 7zip etc.- and the files aren't there.
Have I lost them for good?

cereberus said:

Are you sure you have not ended up with a temporary profile. Go to users directory and check any profiles there.

I have checked Users and Admin profiles plus all folders on the drive; there's nothing there but the essential Windows files.

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jumanji said:

Just creating a recovery drive should not result in losing your personal files existing on the PC.

Did you, after creating the Recovery drive, use it to restore Windows 10?

( Usually on a Dell PC, you can create a recovery drive. When you put a check mark against "Backup system files to the recovery drive" , it will write the factory image to the recovery drive. You can then use the recovery drive to restore your PC to the factory condition. That would mean you would lose whatever you did after the initial setup of the PC. But bear in mind that this can happen only when you restore the PC using the recovery drive. On my Dell Inspiron 3280 I create a recovery drive once in six months or so just to ensure that I have a working recovery drive. I haven't lost any personal files just by creating the recovery drive.)

Note: On a flash drive not used for a longtime, data loss can occurr due to slow leakage of charge in the memory cells. So it is advisable to refresh by copying and rewriting the data periodically.

I haven't used the drive to restore my laptop; I made it for just in case my OS would crash, but my Windows 10 was-and is- working fine. Surprisingly, some files on desktop-word docs and pdf's- are intact, whilst the ones on C:-all of them- have vanished. I'm aware that should I use the drive to restore/repair my OS would result in losing the files I have left by performing a 'clean install'.
I will try to mount the drive on a VM, but I bet it will only install W10 and nothing more, since there's nothing else there.
My question is where could have the files gone whilst backing up the system on a drive and why not all of them? Alternatively, when rebooting from a restore point, why weren't all the files back on the C: drive? I mean, all the files saved up until creating the restore point. I would have been happy with just that and losing everything else from the restore point to the present.
Many thanks,
Albert

[QUOTE=shuaner;2190085]My question is where could have the files gone whilst backing up the system on a drive and why not all of them? Alternatively, when rebooting from a restore point, why weren't all the files back on the C: drive? I mean, all the files saved up until creating the restore point. I would have been happy with just that and losing everything else from the restore point to the present. Many thanks, Albert[/QUOTE]

This a why regular data backup is essential, but deal with that another day. Install this file search tool - voidtools
Let it finish scanning your drive (very fast) and punch in a few file names that you remember. It will find the paths to them even if it's in Recycle bin or Hidden folder. R-click 'open path' will open in containing folder. Good Luck

Bree said:

Creating a 'Recovery Drive, including system files' cannot delete user files - it just backs up the system files required to install Windows. Something else is at play here.

There's a misunderstanding of what a 'restore point' is in the above. The only files backed up (or restored) by a restore point are those for newly installed software, drivers, and the registry changes. A restore point cannot, and never has, backed up or restored user files. In fact it specifically tells you that is the case....

True about the restore point, I've expressed it wrong- I was expecting to restore the system to its previous state before the recovery drive, thus including all files and folders-which shouldn't have been affected at all in the first place.
I think that what is at play here (defo no malware) might be a corrupt flash drive -though I've formatted it in cmd prior to using it and scanned with BitDefender. I've had issues in the past with this drive-the NAND memory module might be failing and I'm pretty sure it's a 'fake' drive: it used to be 512gb then after formatting didn't show up in device manager and after restoring it with FirstChip MP Tools it showed 32gb.
All in all, my bad for choosing this drive when I had a perfectly working WD of 1TB...

mrgeek said:

[QUOTE=shuaner;2190085]My question is where could have the files gone whilst backing up the system on a drive and why not all of them? Alternatively, when rebooting from a restore point, why weren't all the files back on the C: drive? I mean, all the files saved up until creating the restore point. I would have been happy with just that and losing everything else from the restore point to the present. Many thanks, Albert

This a why regular data backup is essential, but deal with that another day. Install this file search tool - voidtools
Let it finish scanning your drive (very fast) and punch in a few file names that you remember. It will find the paths to them even if it's in Recycle bin or Hidden folder. R-click 'open path' will open in containing folder. Good Luck[/QUOTE]

I can only find what's left in my Downloads folder; needless to say, I've looked in Recycle Bin and my File Explorer is set to show all hidden folders.

shuaner said:

I can only find what's left in my Downloads folder; needless to say, I've looked in Recycle Bin and my File Explorer is set to show all hidden folders.

Did you run the tool (it'll take less than 5 mins to install and do drive scan)? It will do a much deeper scan than File explorer.