Google Drive users' reports about missing files & data under investigation

Google is looking into an issue where some Google Drive users are reporting missing files and data from their cloud storage accounts. The issue was spotted by a South Korean user who took to the official Google support forums, only for the thread to be bombarded by others from different regions dealing with a similar problem.

In a lengthy thread that now has 356 people who “have the same question” at the time of this writing, some Google Drive users say they’ve lost months of files and data saved on the platform. But it’s much worse for others, who have lost years of data, some spanning all the way from 2016 to 2019.

Since Google Drive is home to all files created in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, it means those affected can no longer access data from these apps. Other Google Drive users are also reporting that their uploaded files and folders such as PDFs, images, and videos are missing.

While acknowledging the issue, a company employee says only a limited set of Google Drive users are missing their files and data due to this glitch, and that too on desktop. However, there’s no way to prove that every single report is from people using Google Drive on desktop. Furthermore, the employee doesn’t go into details of when those affected can expect a fix for this glitch and whether their missing files will be restored. But in the meantime, you’re warned against taking the following actions to prevent further damage:

• 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
• Optional: If you have room on your hard drive, we recommend making a copy of the app data folder.

Hopefully, Google will also shed some light on what triggered this bug in addition to providing a quick fix. We’ll let you know when this happens.

Featured image: Google