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It seems like Google potentially lost Google Drive data for multiple users. Do note that this could just be a bug of some sort, though… it remains to be seen. What exactly happened? Well, let’s delve into it.
Google Drive users lost data, as Google is investigating what happened
A user by the name ‘Yeonjoong’ reported an issue less than a week ago, on Google issue tracker. He basically said that his Google Drive files “suddenly disappeared”. He claims that “the Drive literally went back to condition in May 2023”.
So, basically everything he put on the Drive after May 2023 is not there anymore. He did not delete any files manually, and there are no files in the Trash. The user also mentioned that he never syncs or shares his files with anyone else.
He also tried to fire up the recovery program after reaching out to the Google support team from South Korea, but it didn’t help. He reported the issue to the Google support team, he guesses in the United States, and was then passed on to the company’s engineer.
That user did not get a response, it seems, but another one did. ‘User 18316101495719567270’ said that the Google Support team said that they’re “continuously tracking this case”, and that this is not an isolated case.
Google is trying to figure out what happened, and retrieve lost data
It was said that the issue is “being investigated by our Product Engineers and we are also waiting for a root cause analysis as well on how we can fix it”. The message also asked the user not to make changes on the root/data folder in Google Drive until further notice.
A number of other users reported the same thing in the same thread, basically. Let’s hope that Google’s Project Engineers will be able to find a way to recover lost data, and that this is not permanent. If it is, then it’s an even bigger problem than initially thought.