Google Drive fix for missing files

 Google Drive fix for its missing

 files issue 

Some Google Drive users have recently reported that the cloud storage service has been deleting months’ worth of files from their computers. If you are also facing same problem, help could be at hand, as Google has just shared a few tips which might help get your files back. It’s possible that even after trying Google’s methods, your files could not be returned, so it is not a guaranteed remedy. But Google says its fixes are for “desktop users on version 84 who experienced issues accessing local files which had yet to be synced to Drive,” so the solutions seem to be fairly limited in scope.

Many users have lost files from months ago, which is potentially at odds with Google’s note that the fix is for files which had not been synced to Drive. Still, it’s worth trying Google’s ideas if you are affected. The first method requires you to download the latest version of Google Drive. Once that’s been installed, you would need to run Google’s recovery tool. To do so, open Drive for desktop and select the app’s icon in your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (macOS). Hold the Shift key and select the Settings (cog) button, then choose “Recover from backups.” This will kick off the recovery process. You will get a message reading “Recovery has started” if there are files to recover, or “No backups found” if not. If there is a backup, you will see “Recovery is complete” and a new folder with your unsynchronized files will appear on your desktop.

You might also see a “Not enough disk space” message once the tool finishes. In this case, you can free up disk space and try again, or attempt the next method to recover the files to a different drive. Running the recovery process on a different drive with more free space requires using the command line, which is a little more advanced. To do this, you will again need to download the latest version of Drive for desktop. After that, close the app and open a command prompt (Windows) or Terminal (macOS). 

On Windows, run the following command, including the quotation marks:  “C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\launch.bat” --recover_from_account_backups

On macOS, you’ll need to enter this, including the speech marks: “/Applications/Google Drive.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Drive” --recover_from_account_backups

You can use '--recover_output_path' in command line to specify where recovered files should be saved. The tool will run in the background in Windows and in the foreground in macOS. When complete, a folder called Google Drive Recovery will appear in your selected output location (the desktop by default) containing your recovered files. 

There is one other method to try if neither of the last two work for you, and this could help if you previously disconnected your account or removed the Google Drive cache. However, the technique requires you to have either a Windows backup or a Time Machine backup in macOS. For the full instructions on this last solution, check out the 'Advanced troubleshooting options for data recovery' section in the Google Drive help page. If after all  of  abovementioned procedures, you still can’t get your files back, then you need to let Google know by submitting feedback through the Google Drive app. Use the hashtag #DFD84 and tick the checkbox to include diagnostic logs.

This whole sorry saga has been a real pain for some Google Drive users – after all, the whole point of using the app is to keep your files safely synced, not to have them deleted. They are in their folder on my computer, the next they have been deleted. Sometimes you might be able to find them in my computer’s trash, and other times they are in the trash online in Google Drive, but some files might have simply disappeared without a trace. Google’s proposed fixes are able to put a stop to this problem, or at least help users get back files they thought had been deleted. But while this Drive update might help to restore your files after the fact, we don’t know if it will fix your documents being deleted in the first place.