It has happened to me on several occasions that my Downloads folder has been deleted. This is, of course, a bummer, but nothing of big significance, as my Downloads folder is just stuff without a meaning to me. However, about an hour ago, my Documents folder containing several very important files has randomly vanished. The moment when it vanished I was in my terminal and changed from my Documents folder to my home folder using the cd command. I can confirm that I did not move or remove the folder via a command (mv, rm etc.). However I did move files within the directory.
It simply vanished out of existence after I hit the cd command. After my Downloads folder disappeared the first time, I dreaded this moment and set up Deja Dup as my backup solution, however, as it turns out, it did not back up the Documents folder as I set it up to do, leaving me lost without my important work.
I use an HDD, and a SMARTctl check told me that it passed the SMART overall-health self-assessment test, which I indicate to be a sign that the hard drive is functioning and healthy.
A bit more information about my system: I use openSUSE Tumbleweed x64 on the latest snapshot with a btrfs partition on both / and /home.
Is there some way to get the folder back, or at least make sure it won’t happen again in the future?
The question about it happening again. You noticed the directory went away on cd but I guess it may have gone already at that point. Look in the journal if there’s something suspicious:
sudo journalctl --since="2020-05-27 00:00:00"
To make recovery easier, I’d enable snapshots on /home, and make periodic btrfs send/receive to a btrfs fs on external media: Incremental Backup - btrfs Wiki .
Do you recall which TW snapshot do you used to install the system?