Did the .59 or .63 patch in inadvertently set a default value of 20 days to "Set assets to non-active if not seen in the last.. " and Permanently delete assets not seen in the last ... "? I installed 5.1.0.63 yesterday and was running on 5.1.0.59 before that and that is not how I had those values configured previously. This is definitely a new issue for me, users computers that I know just recently returned from extended leave have been recently discovered as "new" assets but it should have taken 60 days to mark them non-active and 180 to delete them. These users are usually gone 30-60 days.
Its lucky I noticed it but its unfortunate. I needed to look something up today for an executive that was on an extended vacation and noticed all of his historical data is gone then looked up other users I know were gone more that 30 days and their systems were "new" again too. The Computer: New computers found in the last 7 days report has 57 items in it and there is no way that many new computers have been deployed in the last 7 days.
If that was not triggered by a patch would that setting being changed be recorded in the database in any way? That would give me a time frame to decide if I want to restore the DB to a point in time before then to get the data back. That would also clue me into weather another person on the team made the change without consulting me.