Starting on November 22nd Google drive users began reporting huge amount of files missing.
One user reported the experience as this:
In my case, the same thing happened. I received a sync error message, as if Google Drive had been logged out. I logged in again, and many of my important work and personal files disappeared
Other users reported frustration with the lack of customer support from Google.
I accessed my Google Drive again. My heart dropped! There was NOTHING in it. Nothing in deleted items nor in activity which immediately indicated to me that the fault/glitch lay with Google. I had more than 1TB of photos and documents (20 years worth!!) saved on the drive so it would be impossible for me to accidentally delete all that info with just one click!
It's not possible to contact an actual human at Google Drive which is the most infuriating thing I have ever experienced! All the Trouble Shooting solutions suggest "user fault" but from just reading this thread, that is clearly not the case. I am also not an idiot - there is no way I could "accidentally" delete that much information with one click.
This is a service I PAY FOR!!! Yet no one can help me and I cannot speak to a Google Drive employee directly.
The fixes
Google engineers traced the culprit to a bug in their desktop app, “Drive for desktop” v84 and released a recovery tool on December 6th: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/14286582
Users continued to report that the Google recovery tool did not work. It’s unclear if the tool works for the majority of users or not.
Another user posted a fix that seemed to work on The Register: https://forums.theregister.com/post/4765510
Use this fix with caution even though users have reported that it works.
Hacker News picked up the event and threads with hundreds of comments appeared discussing the issue:
No additional fixes appear to be reported in those threads although some commenters expressed skepticism at Google's official explanation:
Root cause
As of this post Google hasn’t confirmed exactly what caused the deletion of the data. It seems to be related to Google Drive for desktop syncing issues but there hasn’t been any further information.
Some have been wondering if there’s any connection to Google’s new policy of deleting inactive drive accounts and their data. The timing does seem suspicious.
If you have any info as to what caused this failure, please DM me and let me know.