Media files disappeared after restoring from AnkiWeb

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

Hi,

I’m hoping someone can help me understand whether there is any chance of recovering my missing media files.

I use Anki on both my computer and my phone, and my collection is synced with AnkiWeb. I have many decks, including several large ones with a few gigabytes of media.

On my computer, I temporarily deleted a couple of those large decks because I wanted to experiment with some other decks. I did not sync after deleting them, so I assumed the original decks and their media were still safely stored on AnkiWeb. I also removed trashed media, so I could have free space on my hard drive.

The experiment did not work out, so I restored a backup. After that, Anki asked me which version I wanted to keep during synchronization. I chose “Download from AnkiWeb,” because the deletion had never been synced and I expected the server version to restore everything.

The decks and cards seem to have been restored, but I later noticed that the media files belonging to the deleted decks were missing.

I then opened Anki on my phone, where the media files were still present, hoping that the mobile version might help me recover them. Unfortunately, as soon as synchronization started, Anki also began deleting those media files from the phone.

After discussing the situation with ChatGPT, I think I understand that I made a mistake by assuming that downloading the collection from AnkiWeb would also restore or overwrite the media state. Apparently, collection syncing and media syncing are handled separately, so the media deletion may have been synchronized even though I downloaded the collection from the server.

ChatGPT also told me that there may be a chance that recently deleted media can be recovered from an AnkiWeb backup, and suggested that I create a topic here as soon as possible.

Is there any possibility of recovering these media files from the server? I have stopped syncing for now.

Please let me know what information would be needed from me. Don’t know how the interface may look like, but if possible, I’d like to restore version saved before this day (ie, 13 july)

Thank you.

2

Yes, that’s correct.

[What you could have done to avoid syncing the media deletions to AnkiWeb is log out in Preferences > Syncing. When you clicked Sync and log in again, AnkiWeb would do a full rescan of your media. Because you were out of sync – missing files on one end, but not the other – those files would have been restored instead of deleted.]

In the future, when you want to experiment with a deck, create another profile in desktop Anki – Profiles - Anki Manual . That profile won’t sync with your AnkiWeb account, so it will protect you real collection from harm.

Just to be clear – if the media files were already in media.trash, then those files were already not synced with the server. So, did you just Empty Trash? Or did you first Delete Unused Media, to delete the media for those temporarily-deleted decks from your collection?

Those questions and advice aside – yes, I can restore recently deleted media on the server side, so you should be able to re-download those files.

Can you confirm that the email address you used to post here is the same one for your AnkiWeb account?

If so, I can see that there are 10K+ files deleted in the past day. I can start by restoring those, and then we can see if there are any more. That’s good that you’ve already stopped syncing. The restore can take up to an hour, and I’ll let you know when it is starting and when it is completed.

Please confirm if you are ready for me to proceed with restoring those files.

3

Just to be clear – if the media files were already in media.trash, then those files were already not synced with the server. So, did you just Empty Trash? Or did you first Delete Unused Media, to delete the media for those temporarily-deleted decks from your collection?

First of all, I deleted the deck. Then deleted unused media. And finally emptied trash. And then I installed those experimental decks. To be fair, I liked them, but their weight (+6 Gb) apparently made my collection unsynchronizable.

In the future, when you want to experiment with a deck, create another profile in desktop Anki – Profiles - Anki Manual . That profile won’t sync with your AnkiWeb account, so it will protect you real collection from harm.

I think, I did that as well. But main issue is these decks made my collection is too large and anki denied me from synchronization. So, I decided to make backup, which was unsuccessful ((

Please confirm if you are ready for me to proceed with restoring those files.

Yes, I confirm this. And I have additional question. After restoration, what’s the correct sequence of events? I mean, should I start with something specific? Or I will just synchronize my ankidroid and desktop version with ankiweb and download collection FROM ankiweb?