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Some Google Drive Users' Files Have Mysteriously Vanished

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Google Drive users have been warned not to disconnect their account within the Google Drive for desktop app, after a spate of reports of files going missing from the cloud service.

Google-Drive.jpg

Alarm bells began ringing last week on Google's community support site when some users reported files mysteriously disappearing from Google Drive, with some posters claiming six or more months of data had vanished.

As noted by The Register, one user logged into Google Drive to find things as they were in May 2023, with everything saved since that date gone, despite attempts by Google's support team to help them recover the files. Currently, the thread of complaints has 217 users who clicked the "I have the same question."

The Google Drive team has since posted that it is "investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users." In the meantime:
  • Do not click "Disconnect account" within Drive for desktop
  • Do not delete or move the app data folder:
    Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
    macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
Google also recommends making a copy of the app data folder if there's space on your hard drive, until the sync issue is resolved. We'll update this article if we hear more.

Article Link: Some Google Drive Users' Files Have Mysteriously Vanished
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/28/google-drive-files-going-missing/
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I heard a guy in a phone shop yesterday asking after where his files had gone on google drive and something seemed not right as he couldn't see a bunch of them :oops: He was told to come back to see the "expert" later in the day. Hope they did not do anything drastic!
 
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Just after they'd started telling me I needed to pay for more storage! (I only have a tiny usage because it was convenient and offers an alternative when I share files. Whatever I use, some people seem to have a problem so three options does sometimes help.)
 
MacRumors said:


Google Drive users have been warned not to disconnect their account within the Google Drive for desktop app, after a spate of reports of files going missing from the cloud service.

Google-Drive.jpg

Alarm bells began ringing last week on Google's community support site when some users reported files mysteriously disappearing from Google Drive, with some posters claiming six or months of data had vanished.

As noted by The Register, one user logged into Google Drive to find things as they were in May 2023, with everything saved since that date gone, despite attempts by Google's support team to help them recover the files. Currently, the thread of complaints has 217 users who clicked the "I have the same question."

The Google Drive team has since posted that it is "investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users." In the meantime:
  • Do not click "Disconnect account" within Drive for desktop
  • Do not delete or move the app data folder:
    Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
    macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
Google also recommends making a copy of the app data folder if there's space on your hard drive, until the sync issue is resolved. We'll update this article if we hear more.

Article Link: Some Google Drive Users' Files Have Mysteriously Vanished
Click to expand...
Not the thing you wanna hear on a Tuesday Morning.
 
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rnizlek said:
This is why I have a dedicated online backup subscription and don't rely entirely on a cloud drive. There's just two much risk having all one's data in only a single place.
Click to expand...

I wonder how Apple handle this. If I understand it correctly, we still have a local copy on our devices. Say, if we take Notes as an example, we have a note on a device and a copy in the iCloud, right?
 
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Those who use the desktop app, have you tried verifying the "lost" files to be actually lost by checking on the website or only shows as lost on the app?

I have files on Google Drive and Google Photos but I only access them through the website and never installed the app...
 
heystu said:
Shows the level of dependency and trust we have on cloud storage now, if anything happened to my iCloud Drive I'd lose so much...think it's time to invest in a separate back-up solution, maybe get something decent in the Black Friday deals! Oh wait...
Click to expand...
You mean you are not already using Time Machine that's built-in to macOS??? If for some reason you are not, make setting that up your priority today. It's very easy.
 
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rnizlek said:
This is why I have a dedicated online backup subscription and don't rely entirely on a cloud drive. There's just two much risk having all one's data in only a single place.
Click to expand...

I backup locally. My Google Drive is fully synced to my computer, and from there it's backed up offline to hard drives weekly. I swap a couple backup drives monthly in case one of them fail. I hate having more hardware at home to deal with, though.

As of this morning, nothing seems to be missing from my Google Drive, but I need to show this to my wife ASAP. She runs her entire business out of drive/docs/gmail.
 
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Google has long been untrustworthy. I only put a copy of things in the cloud if I need to access them whilst traveling on my mobile devices. Have long been using a RAID array at home to store things. Anything really important gets multiple backups including offline. 🤷🏼‍♂️
 
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You're kidding me this is crazy. Because of Dropbox's ever increasing prices I thought I'd use Google Drive with my Workspace account and save some money. It's pretty bad as far as the desktop experience goes. However I try to keep as much data as I can locally, back up the device to Time Machine, and I use a QNAP with an API to download all my Drive files as a backup once a week, as I have zero trust for cloud services.
 
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Everyone is upset because this is so unlike Google.

This is a frequent and unfixed bug with iCloud Drive where desktop and other files can get permanently deleted when disconnecting. No says boo because we know that Apple won’t fix it.

I stopped using iCloud Drive years ago because of this yet continue to have friends and family ask me about what to do about this problem. Ya, there’s nothing you can do. Apple doesn’t care to fix it.
 
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JosephAW said:
Only access Google Drive via browser, I don't sync anything with my computer with Google. More of a diehard dropbox or box.net user.
Time Machine to the rescue, unless you've excluded that folder from time machine. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
If i remember correctly, time machine wont properly backup cloud files that been been migrated to the file provider api as of montelame
 
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