Alexander Lewis
Nov 28, 2023
Google is currently probing into reports from Google Drive users who say their personal files have unexpectedly disappeared from the cloud service.
The company has acknowledged the problem in a new thread on the Google community support platform.
Attributing it to a synchronization error, the search engine giant believes the issue has affected only a small group of users of the Google Drive desktop app, specifically versions 84.0.0.0 through 84.0.4.0.
The Verge, while citing sources, reported that a user, who lost all of his Google Drive data dating back to May, raised his voice on Google's community support site.
The user reportedly sought help from Google's support team, and after putting in much effort including attempts to backup and restore the DriveFS folder, he failed to find a solution.
Besides countless comments from users describing similar issues in the feedback section, the support thread now has 192 users who have reported that they are facing the same problem.
While expressing dissent over Google’s inability to find the root cause of the bug, one user wrote that their “IT guy” couldn’t find any traces of the files, while another noted that Google asked for an export of their drive diagnostic data.
In response to the ongoing situation, a member of the Google Drive team named Saitej issued a warning wherein he advised users not to click on "disconnect account" within the Google Drive for desktop and also cautioned against deleting or moving the app data folder.
Saitej suggested that users should create a backup copy of the app folder in another location as a safety measure.
The folder's location is as follows:
Windows - %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
macOS - ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS.
