Entire directory gone

@sid316


Open File Explorer and search ThisPC for "baseball" without the quotes.

There's always the danger that the Recycle Bin was full (its contents are finite) and the (deleted?) folder was removed from the device completely.

What's the Desktop like - lotsa other folders? Do the search suggested by @Ghot above, it may have slipped inside one of the other folders.

Worst case, you might have to run something like Recuva (freeware) to find deleted files. But just be careful how much "recovery" software you throw at your device - the more chance that installations will overwrite locations where files were stored.

I haven't opened it for probably this entire year,

If it was deleted, it will have been overwritten long ago, so I think you can forget the idea of using recovery software.

Noting you haven't emptied the Recycle bin, please note this is how it works: (as idgat commented)

When the recycle bin's maximum size has been reached the oldest contents will be deleted to make room for the most recently deleted.

The only other possibility is that the folder has been moved- perhaps put within one of your other sports folders.

If you're lucky a suitable search (which Ghot mentioned) might find it.

Always maintain regular and routine backups.

Start with disk imaging e.g. Macrium Reflect/Aomei Backupper (free or paid) to external storage
Add scheduled creation of System Restore points
Add specific data backup of faster changing key data

Can save a huge amount of time and stress.

To search I would use 'Everything' using the folder's name.

Downloads - voidtools

Get: Recuva

Make a search in the location of where that folder was, and this program can probably recover it.
If the folder isn't found there, then do a search on the whole drive, then search for that folder.

I don't think my Recycle Bin was that full, but it could have been. If it was would Windows just randomly choose a folder to delete with no warning?

I think you said you've not emptied it yourself.

I quoted a description that explains how the limited space assigned to it is used. From that your concern is already answered:

If it was would Windows just randomly choose a folder to delete with no warning?

..........................................................................no........................ ...............................................yes
(from the recycle bin).

I do backup every day to a 2TB external drive, but since I haven't been in that directory since about the end of May it has likely been over written.

Depends also what kind of backup you're talking about.
- Complete overwrite of your existing backup? Bad idea.
- Version controlled backup? May well still have old unchanged copies.
- Continuously synchronised? Every change is mirrored. so lost on PC = lost on backup. Poor method.
etc...

When I search This PC it brings up, as I expected, hundreds of results.

Can't comment- depends how you're searching- the search string.
Did you construct that to give you
- multiple results
- a limited number of targeted results
- something unique to the folder you've lost

Only you know the answer to that... does what you're seeing match your expectation, and would you get better results by changing the search string?

Also you don't say what you're using as a search tool.
If you're using Windows search, how much is searched depends on where you're starting from in the file system.
Further, you can configure it to exclude system folders for example.

This is why in this case it's easier to use a free indexing search tool as mentioned above (Everything).
Launch that, let it index alll your folders- a few minutes perhaps- then try searching with a suitable title.

sid316 said:

Thanks for all the suggestions. Here are the answers to the questions raised.
When I search This PC it brings up, as I expected, hundreds of results. When I find some that should be correct and I try moving them to a Baseball2 directory I get the following message: Error Code 0x8007016A The cloud file provider is not running. Other folders which look correct say this folder is empty.

It looks like your folder is stored in the cloud, and it's server is not running (or enabled)?
Or your access to the cloud is not running or enabled?
I don't use any type of cloud services, so I'm not up on the current cloud terminology.