Google Drive users are saying that their recent files have disappeared. The cloud service has reverted back to an earlier storage snapshot from around April-May 2023.
Last week, there was a trending issue reported on Google’s support forums. Many people said that they lost recent data and changes to their folder structure.
“There is a serious issue here that needs to escalate urgently. We have a support ticket open, this has not been helpful to date,” said a Google Drive user on the support thread.
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“I pay extra each month to store folders in the cloud so that it is safe, so it is devastating that all my work appears to have been lost,” another Google Drive user posted.
No recent changes are visible in the activity logs of affected accounts, which confirms that the users didn’t accidentally delete anything.
There are no signs of user error. The problem seems to be with the service’s system. It prevented data synchronization between local devices and Google Cloud at some point.
Google’s support agents have posted a response claiming that Google’s support engineers are currently investigating the issue. However, they have not yet provided an estimated time for when the problem will be fixed.
“Please accept my sincere apologies if I’m unable to join the Google Meet session. I am continuously tracking this case and to be transparent with you we totally agree now that you are not the only customer affected by this behavior.
Aside from the thread link you provided there are other admins now that have reported the same behavior we encounter where after the update there are files that went missing. This is now being investigated by our Product Engineers and we are also waiting for a root cause analysis as well on how we can fix it. Due to the ongoing investigation we are unable to provide an ETA yet.
We don’t recommend as well to make changes on the root/data folder while we wait for instructions from our Engineers. I will continue to monitor the behavior of reported issue from other admins and schedule a callback tomorrow same time hoping there are progress within the day that I can deliver before our Google Meet session.” – Google Support Team.
Recommendation for those affected: Avoid making changes to the root/data folder until the situation is resolved and the cause of the problem is identified.
No official statement yet to be published from google.