Folders Deleted off Laptop also Delete on External Drive

[sapphiresiren]

Hi, everyone.

So I ran into a problem while moving files and folders off my old laptop onto an external hard drive. I copied the Downloads folder from my laptop to my external hard drive so that the hard drive on my laptop had the original, and the external drive had the copy. I then went to delete the original, and it also deleted the copy!

I don't need help recovering the files; I'm already on that. I want to know WHY this happened and how I can turn whatever it is off so this doesn't happen again. Were the files synced somehow? And yes, I'm 100% certain I copied it and deleted it only off the laptop. I'm really frustrated and hope I can get my files back. (Despite it being the Downloads folder, I kept a lot of important stuff in there from school and friends and such to sort later.)

Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.

 

[USAFRet]

If you copied the actual Downloads folder, vs the files inside....it may have just created a pointer to that original folder.

The Download folder, just like Doc, Music, etc libraries, are user specific, tied to a particular NTFS user.
Copying the folder may have transferred that NTFS permissions to a new pseudo location on the external.

The files inside that folder do not have the same restrictions.

 

[sapphiresiren]

If you copied the actual Downloads folder, vs the files inside....it may have just created a pointer to that original folder.

The Download folder, just like Doc, Music, etc libraries, are user specific, tied to a particular NTFS user.
Copying the folder may have transferred that NTFS permissions to a new pseudo location on the external.

The files inside that folder do not have the same restrictions.

Ugh, I had a feeling that was the case... I'll be more careful next time. Thank you so much for the response. Oddly enough, though, I was able to recover the files off the external hard drive and not the laptop. I have no idea why. Maybe the laptop folder became the "pointer." Anyway, thanks again!