Your Garmin help, please

I have the Garmin 910xt which is a Triathlon watch, as such it is waterproof to 50m.

This means that an open USB port is not viable so all data transfer is handled via ANT+, a USB key sits in a port on my laptop and ANT Agent runs in the background, so as soon as I return to the house my watch starts uploading whatever activity I have just completed to the laptop, which then loads it into Garmin Connect.

An interesting issue is that once the file has been uploaded to ANT Agent any other programs (Strava, training peaks, etc etc) can upload the file direct from the watch, but until that initial upload has happened via ANT Agent the activity is invisible to those other programs.

I went for a 10k run yesterday along the cliffs, got home and the god-damn thing got stuck in a fugue state of transferring, getting to 100% uploaded, then cycling back to 0% again.

I spent a good 2 hours in front of the TV trying to get the damn thing to work, and in the end gave up.

I finally deleted ALL activities on the watch, then gave it a master reset.

It's now, theoretically, like "new", with no data, latest software release etc etc.

However, if you open Device Agent, you can still see all the old activity files in there.

It looks like deleting an activity simply deletes the address from the Garmins memory, but leaves the file there, but other programs can still see the files- although not the run from last night annoyingly.

Does anyone have any idea if the run from last night is still recoverable?

Isnt it the other way around?
Deleted files are goneski. But the address is still there.

My 910xt that the jobsworth in the store said was unused, despite the fecked box. Has a running file from 3 weeks before I bought it, on it. I'd complain. But its the last they had, and the cheapest locally.

My first 2 activities uploaded as you describe. But after that I've had to have laptop, and watch powered up. Then I need to remove, and re-insert to dongle to promote the transfer.

Also. Could just be my new watch. But I had a software update from something.27 to something .28 over the weekend. Seems to be behaving better now.