Google Drive Desktop Loses ‘Months of Data’ Stored by Users

Google Drive is one of the most popular destinations for a cloud storage service. It is the default space on the internet for many people when it comes to uploading content. However, the status of Google Drive might change as many users are claiming that their files on Google Drive desktop and more have vanished from the cloud platform.

This reliability concern has been highlighted on the Google Support Forums. Several other users have responded to the forum post stating the exact same concern. One user said, “All of my files modified or created since May have disappeared. 1000s of files and folders. Support has been working on it for over a week.“

Clearly, a huge issue is ongoing within the Google Drive cloud service. The forum post has also been marked as a ‘trending issue.’ To make matters worse, some customers have allegedly received unsatisfactory responses from the customer support team. According to one user, Google Support stated, “If the file recovery tool did not recover the files, I am afraid that we do not have any option to recover the files anymore.”

Google’s Response to the Data Loss

According to another user on the Google Support forums, one of the customer reps did reveal additional information clarifying the issue. The Google rep allegedly stated, “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.”

Moreover, a Google Drive member has also posted a response on the forum post confirming that Google is ‘investigating reports’ on this particular problem and has also stated that a “limited subset of Drive for desktop users” has been affected. This applies to Drive desktop versions 84.0.0.0 to 84.0.4.0.

If you have been affected by this issue, the employee stated three things to keep in mind while Google investigates this issue:

• Avoid using the ‘disconnect account‘ option in Google Drive for Desktop application
• Avoid deletion of the ‘app data folder’:
  • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS 
• As an optional step, it is recommended that the AppData folder be copied to a different location on your hard drive.

Google has not stated yet if Google Photos files are also affected by this issue. We will let you know if this issue gets fixed. Google might update its users soon, too, on steps to take to get your files back.

Beebom’s Take: Should You Trust Cloud Storage?

This massive issue with one of the most popular cloud storage platforms sparks an important question. Should you trust cloud storage providers with your important files? Maybe not. After this reliability concern with Google’s own Drive platform, it has been proven that if you only have a single backup destination, you don’t really have a proper backup.

I will personally keep using Google’s services. This is simply because it involves too much effort to move the bulk of my data gathered in Drive over the years. However, I no longer trust it to keep all my important data forever.

What are your thoughts on Google losing customer’s data stored on the Google Drive cloud platform? Let us know in the comments below.