Obsidian Vault Recovery — Loading Cache Hang

Problem

Obsidian refused to open MajorVault, hanging indefinitely on "Loading cache" with no progress. The issue began with an EACCES permission error on a Python venv symlink inside the vault, then persisted even after the offending files were removed.

Root Causes

Two compounding issues caused the hang:

79GB of ML project files inside the vault. The 20-Projects/MajorTwin directory contained model weights, training artifacts, and venvs that Obsidian tried to index on every launch. Specifically:
- 06-Models — ~39GB of model weights
- 09-Artifacts — ~38GB of training artifacts
- 10-Training — ~1.8GB of training data
- 11-Tools — Python venvs and llama.cpp builds (with broken symlinks on Windows)
Stale Electron app data. After Obsidian attempted to index the 79GB, it wrote corrupt state into its global app data (%APPDATA%\obsidian). This persisted across vault config resets and caused the hang even after the large files were removed.

A secondary contributing factor was "open": true in obsidian.json, which forced Obsidian to resume the broken session on every launch.

Resolution Steps

1. Remove large non-note directories from the vault

Move-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\20-Projects\MajorTwin\06-Models" "D:\MajorTwin\06-Models"
Move-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\20-Projects\MajorTwin\09-Artifacts" "D:\MajorTwin\09-Artifacts"
Move-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\20-Projects\MajorTwin\10-Training" "D:\MajorTwin\10-Training"
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\20-Projects\MajorTwin\11-Tools\venv-unsloth"
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\20-Projects\MajorTwin\11-Tools\llama.cpp"

2. Reset the vault config

Rename-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian" "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian.bak"

3. Fix the open flag in obsidian.json

'{"vaults":{"9147b890194dceb0":{"path":"C:\\Users\\majli\\Documents\\MajorVault","ts":1773207898521,"open":false}}}' | Set-Content "$env:APPDATA\obsidian\obsidian.json"

4. Wipe Obsidian global app data (the key fix)

Stop-Process -Name "Obsidian" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Rename-Item "$env:APPDATA\obsidian" "$env:APPDATA\obsidian.bak"

5. Launch Obsidian and reselect the vault

Obsidian will treat it as a fresh install. Select MajorVault — it should load cleanly.

6. Restore vault config and plugins

Copy-Item "$env:APPDATA\obsidian.bak\obsidian.json" "$env:APPDATA\obsidian\obsidian.json"
Copy-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian.bak\*.json" "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian\"
Copy-Item "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian.bak\plugins.bak" "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian\plugins" -Recurse

7. Clean up backups

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:APPDATA\obsidian.bak"
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault\.obsidian.bak"

Prevention

Add a .obsidianignore file to the vault root

20-Projects/MajorTwin/06-Models
20-Projects/MajorTwin/09-Artifacts
20-Projects/MajorTwin/10-Training
20-Projects/MajorTwin/11-Tools

Add exclusions in Obsidian settings

Settings → Files & Links → Excluded files → add 20-Projects/MajorTwin/11-Tools

Keep ML project files off the vault entirely

Model weights, venvs, training artifacts, and datasets do not belong in Obsidian. Store them on D drive or in WSL2. WSL2 (Fedora43) can access D drive at /mnt/d/MajorTwin/.

Key Diagnostic Commands

# Check vault size by top-level directory
Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\majli\Documents\MajorVault" -Directory | ForEach-Object {
    $size = (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Name = $_.Name; SizeMB = [math]::Round($size/1MB, 1) }
} | Sort-Object SizeMB -Descending

# Check obsidian.json vault state
Get-Content "$env:APPDATA\obsidian\obsidian.json"

# Check Obsidian log
Get-Content "$env:APPDATA\obsidian\obsidian.log" -Tail 50

# Check if Obsidian is running/frozen
Get-Process -Name "Obsidian" | Select-Object CPU, WorkingSet, PagedMemorySize

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