Google Drive files suddenly disappeared. The Drive literally went back May 23

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Google Drive files suddenly disappeared. The Drive literally went back to condition in May 2023

Hi, my Google Drive files suddenly disappeared. The Drive literally went back to condition in May 2023. data from May until today disappeared, and the folder structure went back to status in May.
Google Drive activity doesn’t show any changes (only show activity that was in May)
No files was deleted manually, so no files in Trash. I never sync or shared my files and drive to anyone, I used the drive locally. ..

Message from Support this morning:

“Please accept my sincere apologies if I’m unable to join the Google Meet session. I am continously tracking this case and to be transparent with you we totally agree now that you are not the only customer affected by this behavior…

Allyson Maywald
5 days ago

SAME THING HAPPENED to me! Via chat, I spoke to someone at Google Support and they ran a FILE RECOVERY program that they said could take a couple of hours. Nothing has re appeared yet! I am going to try and get some sleep and check in the morning. Please write back here if you find a solution and I will do the same…

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MatthewSt
18 hr. ago

My partner had the same problem. Took about 2 days but I managed to recover her stuff. The crux of the problem is that the desktop client has not uploaded your data to the cloud, and something in the latest version has reset your local profile. That means that your local, cached, un-uploaded files are now hidden away in a backup folder. Because of this, there’s nothing Google Support will be able to do. Below are the steps I took to recover the files.

1. Uninstall Google Drive.
2. Install an old version of Google Drive (there’s a version 82/83 floating around on the internet).
3. Disable the 2 Google Update services (they won’t be running, but they still need to be disabled).
4. Disable the Google Update scheduled tasks (2 of them).
5. Make sure Google Drive is not running.
6. In the User Data folder, go into Google > DriveFS > the folder with a long number.
7. In that folder there’s a folder called backups, which has another folder with a couple of long numbers. Move all of the files from the “Backup” folder into the main folder (from step 6).
8. Start Google Drive.
9. Go into your G Drive (or wherever it is) and copy _absolutely everything_ somewhere else outside of Google Drive.

Due to the way that Google caches stuff, what you have locally will be your latest files. The problem looks to be that things weren’t being uploaded properly.

10. If you want to carry on using Google Drive (!!!), re-enable the update services and wait for Google Drive to update. It will then sign you out and reset your local state to what it had in the cloud.
11. Use a tool like robocopy to overwrite the contents of your G Drive with what you had copied elsewhere.

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Install an old version looks like a recipe for disaster. (I found this Google software on an obscure server and I now seem to have lost all my money!?)

Copying the files from the client folders to a temporary location, then reinstall GD and let it sync seems the correct method.

cheers, Paul

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How to restore files in Drive for desktop (v84.0.0.0-84.0.4.0)

If you’re among the small subset of Drive for desktop users on version 84 who experienced issues accessing local files that had yet to be synced to Drive, please follow the instructions for one of the following solutions below to recover your files….

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