Last week, numerous Google Drive users took to the service’s support forums to report a troubling issue – entire folders of content in their cloud storage appeared to randomly revert back to outdated automatic backups from as far back as April or May 2023.
Understandably, many users expressed their frustration over this unexplained data and folder structure loss. The activity logs of impacted accounts showed no indications of actions by the user that could have triggered such reversions. Even paid Google Drive customers, who pay monthly fees specifically for the peace of mind of having content backups in the cloud, complained of loss of crucial data.
“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,” one user noted in the support thread.
Overall, this does not appear to be a case of user error leading to accidental deletion or reversion. Rather, a failure in the behind-the-scenes synchronization system between local devices, offline caches, and the Google Drive cloud servers seems the likely culprit.
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Some users do still have the missing data in offline caches on their devices. But currently, no method exists for them to properly restore the lost cloud access and get that data back into their Google Drive storage.
Google’s Response So Far Lacks Key Details
Google volunteer customer support agents on the forums claim Google engineers are actively investigating the root causes of this mass data loss event. However, they have not provided any estimates on when users could expect fixes or file recovery to be complete.
“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.
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 Engieers. I will continue to monitor the behavior of reported issue from other admins and schedule a callback tommorow same time hoping there are progress within the day that I can deliver before our Google Meet session.” – Google Support Team.
The only advice given was for affected users to avoid making further changes to their Google Drive folders until the situation improves. But for people relying on that lost data for business, personal, or other reasons, patience is running thin.
Concerns Around Cloud Storage Reliability and Support
Situations like this highlight potential risks for those relying entirely on cloud sync and storage services. It also demonstrates the need for multi-layered backup strategies, even for cloud-stored data.
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Additionally, since Google’s forums and much of their customer support is powered by volunteers with limited insight, the lack of transparency or ability to get detailed answers in high-impact cases leaves users justifiably distressed.
At this time, affected Google Drive users have little choice but to continue monitoring official updates, refrain from changing cloud data, and hope for swift folder restoration and synchronization fixes in the coming days. But the situation has already raised reasonable doubts about entrusting irreplaceable data to the cloud alone.
