Today, we will talk about updates. It was not long ago that the October update for computers running the Windows operating system, Windows October 2018 Update, or Update 1809, with the official name Redstone 5, was released. And it was not long ago that the update was pulled from distribution again.
The reason for suspending the distribution of the update was its bugs – after installing it, a considerable percentage of users found that their data had been deleted from the system. Not moved, not compressed, but permanently deleted. Specifically, it involved all data in the user's Documents folder.
How to (not) fix it
After the first few forum posts from users robbed of their data by the latest Windows update, advice on how it might or might not be possible to remedy the situation began appearing quickly. The update deleted the data but did not overwrite it, so it was indeed possible to recover it using tools such as Acronis Revive. However, this method cannot be 100% reliable – at least some of the data is usually already overwritten and therefore unavailable for recovery, and most programs and files will not work without complete data.
The only reliable method for recovering data after a loss is regular backup, either based on time, for example every day, or based on events, for example before every system shutdown (every day) or at least before any update.
However, as visionary Elon Musk said in a recent interview for the Recode Decode podcast, paraphrasing Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan, the most ironic outcome of any endeavor is the most likely one – and Update 1809 therefore apparently also broke Windows' native data backup features in addition to deleting user data.
The October Redstone 5 update was never redistributed again (Update: Windows Update 1809 was re-released on November 13, although it was not without bugs the second time around either).
For next time
The solution when the next Windows Update is released is obvious: naturally, we recommend using the most modern and proven reliable Acronis backup products and services. Regularly. Acronis True Image 2019 also supports event-driven backup. It will protect you not only from malicious Windows updates and other natural disasters, but also from human-made ones, such as ransomware. Try it free for 30 days.
Source: https://www.acronis.cz/windows-update-1809-budte-pripraveni-az-vam-windows-zase-jednou-smaze-data/
Article author: ZEBR.ai editorial team
