@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.

@prism Indeed, the shadow copy would "stay at the same location" so to speak. It's been so long since I used that program so my memory is vague on that, and I never used it for your use case either...
I always only used the export option (for the 2-3 times I had to use that program)

@prism Also, perhaps a stupid question, but this happened when you tried to export files right? Did you also try exporting on an external (e.g. USB) drive? Preferably on some filesystem like exfat where metadata almost "doesn't exist" ?

@prism Too relatable, and then you find one post and some idiot microsoft MVP says "did you try sfc/scannow" bs

@prism That's a weird error message. If you can preview them, then the contents must be read from somewhere. Also what does it even mean with "read-only" volume ?? So weird

@prism Yeah people on the internet read a few words and then put their keyboard warrior capes on.
Next time I visit my grandparents I'll check these settings so the same won't repeat for them.

@prism jfc

@prism Sorry to hear that. What's not mentioned to far I see is to look at the shadow copy feature of windows to try to recover something, in the hopes *something* was at least on the drive after all. Even in home editions of windows, you can use a software like shadowexplorer to look.
Might be worth a shot.