As ZDNet reported yesterday, the Windows 10 October 2018 version 1809 upgrade hasn't gone well for a bunch of users who lost documents and photos after updating.
What's worse, it appears that Microsoft may have let this bug slip through testing with Windows Insiders during the preview of Windows 10 version 1809.
As noted by MSPoweruser, Windows insiders hit the exact same snag during Microsoft's preview phase of the Windows 10 version 1809 when updating from version 1803.
For some unknown reason, moving up to Windows 10 version 1809 may delete all the files in user folders. The folders remain, but the files within them are gone, leaving users in potentially a worse pickle than ransomware victims experience.WX's spring update was delayed from its originally planned April launch into May by an unspecified-but-serious issue, but Microsoft never did say what the issue was. Apparently this was the issue, and it's certainly enough of an issue to have justified the delay of the 1803 update's rollout. The fact that WX still has this issue, though, and that Microsoft didn't think it important enough to delay the 1809 update's rollout, elevates this from incompetence to malice. It's simply mind-blowing.
And the only defense against this happening to you, both with this update and with and and all future updates, is Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service, which is not free if you need to back up more than 50GB of data. It's as if Microsoft is engaged in a low-key shakedown of the entire WX user base. Holy ransomware, Batman! Except this ransomware is your OS, and thus can't be avoided.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'm not alone in saying it: I don't care if it comes from Microsoft, Windows 10 is malware.