Question Proton Drive File Renaming and Data Duplication Issue

[ZealousIdeal]

I use Proton Drive to backup some of my data, and at one point when I was trying to restructure the directories within my Proton Drive account I found, some hours later after I had awoken, that Proton Drive had not only renamed seemingly every single file out of 860 GB, but it had also started duplicating all of that data. I stopped it after it had duplicated about 60 GB, but enough damage had been done.

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I emailed Proton Tech Support and they basically said thanks for the information, we have shared it with our developers, but there is nothing that we can do to help you. This is pretty much what I expected from them. Unfortunately I do not have a version of the data that exists prior to this issue. I have already started manually perusing each folder and deleting all redundant files, but there are thousands of them, and far too many for this to really be a practical approach.

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Essentially the problem as I see it is this:
I need to delete the duplicated data (That part is much easier), and I need to rename all the files across all the directories that have had the following appended to their file names: (# Name clash "Date of the Incident" "RandomUniqueAlphaNumericString" #).
Any help would be appreciated, but I am not hopeful that there is anyway to make this less painful. I have already looked at the mass renaming features of command prompt, but that mostly seems to only apply to individual directories and naming schemes that are sequential.

My system is Windows 10 Fully Updated as of the date of this post.

 

[Ralston18]

In lieu of the Command Prompt take a look at Powershell.

For example:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com...e-same-size-on-your-computer-via/ba-p/3787635

You can initially use Get cmdlets to find duplicate files.

Then use other cmdlets and/or scripts to take action.

Example:

https://helpcenter.trendmicro.com/en-us/article/tmka-20817

(Reference the Powershell section).

However, it all depends on your willingness to do some coding. Either directly or by using scripts by others. Maybe with some editing on your part.

The starting point though is to ensure that all important data (duplicated or not) is saved somewhere away from the current host computer. And that that data is proven to be recoverable and readable.

Do some additional reading/googling about Powershell and decide what you are willing to try and risk.

80/20 Rule

Hopefully just a few cmdlets will resolve 80% of the problem created by Protron. And you manually fix the remainder.

And there may be other ideas and suggestions. Perhaps from other Protron users who encountered the same problem(s) and found a fix.

 

[ZealousIdeal]

In lieu of the Command Prompt take a look at Powershell.

For example:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com...e-same-size-on-your-computer-via/ba-p/3787635

You can initially use Get cmdlets to find duplicate files.

Then use other cmdlets and/or scripts to take action.

Example:

https://helpcenter.trendmicro.com/en-us/article/tmka-20817

(Reference the Powershell section).

However, it all depends on your willingness to do some coding. Either directly or by using scripts by others. Maybe with some editing on your part.

The starting point though is to ensure that all important data (duplicated or not) is saved somewhere away from the current host computer. And that that data is proven to be recoverable and readable.

Do some additional reading/googling about Powershell and decide what you are willing to try and risk.

80/20 Rule

Hopefully just a few cmdlets will resolve 80% of the problem created by Protron. And you manually fix the remainder.

And there may be other ideas and suggestions. Perhaps from other Protron users who encountered the same problem(s) and found a fix.

Hey man, thanks for the reply. I am investigating it now. Also yeah I already took steps to make redundant copies of the entirety of the affected data on multiple entirely separate volumes using robocopy. Cheers.

 

[ZealousIdeal]

So after working on this for the last couple days I have successfully finished correcting the problem. Through a combination of Windows File Explorer Search, Sort, and Group functions I was able to isolate the redundant files, and through the use of BRU plus some creative, temporary moves of some folders I was able to successfully rename everything properly. Cheers, and thanks BRU dev team!