Google Drive users report missing files, firm investigating

SAN FRANCISCO: Google has said it is investigating the issue related to reports from Google Drive users claiming that their personal files have unexpectedly disappeared from the cloud service.

Acknowledging the issue, the company on Monday wrote in a new Google community support thread, "We're investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users and will follow up with more updates".

The tech giant noted that it's a sync issue for Google Drive desktop versions 84.0.0.0 through 84.0.4.0.

One of the users on the Google community support site reported losing its data from May until to date.

"Hi, my Google Drive files suddenly disappeared. The Drive literally went back to the condition in May 2023. Data from May until today disappeared, and the folder structure went back to status in May," the user wrote.

According to the user, Google's support team guided them through a data recovery process that included attempting to back up and restore a DriveFS folder but eventually had no success.

One user said their "IT guy" couldn't discover any evidence of the files, while another mentioned Google requested an export of their drive diagnostic data.

A Google Drive team member posted a warning advising users not to click “disconnect account” within the Google Drive for desktop.

Meanwhile, the company has announced that Google Drive will no longer require third-party cookies to be enabled to download files from January 2, 2024.

Google Chrome and other browsers have begun phasing out third-party cookies in order to better protect user privacy.