Please help! I lost all my patterns!

[katie1020]

I was having issues with the select and mask preview not working in photoshop (I have photoshop 2021). I looked up on how to fix it and came across a post on here and it said to add "OLD" to the folder name Adobe Photoshop 2021 Settings. So I did and I reopened photoshop and ALL MY PATTERNS THAT I MADE ARE GONE!! Is there a way I can get them back?? I tried deleting "OLD" from that folder name but it won't let me because it says there's already a folder with that name. I don't understand! I feel so sick about this 😞 Please help! 

[gener7]

Exit Photoshop.

Place a tilde ~ in front of the new Photoshop Settings folder, then remove the OLD from the original folder.   Tilde (~) tells the OS to ignore the file name, so that there isn't a conflict.

Then restart Photoshop. Hopefully your Patterns are back.

[katie1020]

Thank you for replying back. I did try it and it seemed to only bring back all my brushes that had been deleted too. So at least that helped with that. For some reason it didn't work with the patterns..so that's weird. So right now I'm going through my .psds to see if I can salvage some of the patterns. 
Thank you again.

[gener7]

So that this won't happen again, here's how to save all your Presets, export them to a folder and put them in a safe place:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html

[gener7]

I Don't think your patterns are gone. They are in this directory:Windows

Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]\Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings  Look for Patterns.psp in the folder.

The folder is hidden, so follow these instructions to unhide them:

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/show-hidden-files-folders-extensions.html

Then go to that directory.

Also see:https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preference-file-names-locations-photoshop.html