Bulk restore FIT files following Garmin Express deletion?

I believe the change was intentional to finally cope with thousands of support requests they get with broken FIT files due to a full storage on the watch, which is a huge problem especially at older models like FR35, and many other lower-end models with limited storage. They simply did not realize there are people needing the history on the watch, when it is stored in the GC account. And most people indeed never look at the history on the  watch, or do not even know there is some. However, it is clear that those, who need the full history for some reason, should have an option to choose between keeping or cleaning up the Activities folder. It was simply not made in the smartest way, so they had to reverse it for now.

Otherwise, you can request the full data dump at https://www.garmin.com/en-US/account/datamanagement/exportdata/, and drop the activity FIT files to the folder //GARMIN/Activity on the watch. 

I don't think it was intentional, since it breaks some features of the watch. For example, recovery time drops to 0 hours when activities get deleted, which makes recovery time useless. Also, I don't believe that most people never look at the history. I see it as as crucial part of everyday use. As for the full storage, isn't it the case that the oldest activities get deleted when storage is getting full? In any case, I really would like to see Garmin properly explain what happened.

TuomoL said:

For example, recovery time drops to 0 hours when activities get deleted,

Really? I'll have to test it. Cannot right now, had a day off, so the recovery time is 0 anyway.

TuomoL said:

Also, I don't believe that most people never look at the history.

I know a lot of Garmin users, but nobody of them ever looks the history on the watch. Everyone uses the phone app. Myself I prefer the PC. In all the years I own diverse Garmin devices, I used the history on the watch once. Not interested on it at all on the watch, but of course that's just me, I understand some people may want it. That's why I wrote, the clean-up should be optional. 

TuomoL said:

As for the full storage, isn't it the case that the oldest activities get deleted when storage is getting full?

It should, but apparently it does not work well, and the crashes, especially at long activities are very frequent. seilogramp is one of those repairing them here online for others, in his free time, and there are dozens of such cases every week, only on this forum.

If you use USB connection, copy the FIT files into  \GARMIN\NEWFILES   (note NEWFILES, not ACTIVITIES)

And then disconnect from USB, the watch will "import" the activities back into the system

If you do not have the FIT files copied locally you have to download each one at a time from the website.

Then to get back the VO2MAX and LOAD and training data, I find I have to go into the website setting for the watch

and turn OFF physio-true-up, sync

and then turn physio-trup-up back ON, sync-ing after each setting change

then when you disconnect the watch from USB after all that, it's back to "normal"

I dunno what people without USB and PC/MAC do.

TuomoL said:

For example, recovery time drops to 0 hours when activities get deleted, which makes recovery time useless.

OK, so I finally found the time to test it. Deleted all files from my //GARMIN/Activity folder (as I do regularly anyway), and the Training Status, and Recovery Time remained unchanged. I even rebooted the watch to make sure it does not disappear after that, but it is still there unchanged.

Okay, that's curious. I did a running race on Friday, after which my recovery time was more than a day. But after I synced (and the activities got deleted), it was suddenly 0 hours. I wonder if the bug/change/whatever caused something else to be deleted in addition to just the activity files.

Also, when I rebooted the watch, it displayed a message saying that I should do at least two running activities in order to get a VO2max value. This is one more reason why I believe something is not right and this was not intentional. The training status widget at least seems to show correct data in the 7d and 4w load charts, so not everything was deleted.

I tried the Physio TrueUp thing (without copying any files via USB): off, sync, on and sync. Lo and behold, it synced the deleted activities back to the watch! But apparently the watch also re-counted the synced activities into Totals, so that now my running total kilometers are twice compared to what they should be. Sigh.

I wonder what will happen if I delete all the activities, reset the totals and then sync by using Physio TrueUp again...