For a few days now, users of the online storage Google Drive have been reporting here in Google’s support forum and elsewhere complaining that data they have stored on Google Drive has been lost. This obviously affects files that users have backed up on Google Drive in the last few months.
It looks like the cloud service has reverted to a save state that dates back to April or May 2023. Everything that was subsequently saved on Google Drive is currently gone for the affected users. However, Google Drive’s activity history does not show any changes, so you cannot see that any files or folders were deleted after May 2023.
Google admits problems
Google support has now responded and acknowledged problems. The support forum says:
We are investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited group of Drive for Desktop users and will provide further updates.
Until Google resolves the issue, the support agent recommends the following actions:
- Do not click “Disconnect Account” in Drive for desktop
- Do not delete or move the Application Data folder: Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS and for macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
- Optional: If you have space on your hard drive, We recommend making a copy of the app data folder.
Another post from a support representative states that Google has already received several such reports of missing files: “Apart from the thread link you provided, other admins have also reported the same issue with files being lost after the update went. This is now being investigated by our product engineers and we are also awaiting a root cause analysis on how we can resolve the issue. Due to the ongoing investigation, we cannot yet give a date.”
Then comes this urgent advice from the Google employee:
“We also do not recommend making changes to the root/data folder while waiting for instructions from our engineers.”
This is what you should do now
- Do not change anything in the folder structure of Google Drive at this time!
- Back up all affected files, if you still have them on your computer, on another external drive such as an SSD.
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Clearly there are no user errors, but rather a server-side problem at Google. This should be a warning to all users who store their data exclusively in online storage and do not store a local copy on SSDs etc. at home. As convenient and practical as online storage is, it can never replace additional local, physical storage in your own home.
As of today: It is unknown whether the data stored for affected users since May 2023 has been lost or whether Google can restore it. It is also unknown how many users in which countries are affected by the data loss.
