A week ago, user Yonjung reported on the Google Drive support page that all his files hosted on this cloud storage service since May 2023 have disappeared from nowhere. The user explains that “the Google Drive files suddenly disappeared and the drive was restored in May 2023.”
The biggest concern is that Google Drive doesn’t show any changes (only the activity done before May), so it can’t be a hack. Moreover, it is not an isolated case. Attached are reports from other users that this is a problem on Google’s part, as they indicate that their files stored after May 2023 suddenly disappeared.
Files up to 6 months old on Google Drive are deleted without reason
To clarify, both Yoonjung and the other affected users commented that they didn’t delete anything manually and that their files don’t even show up in the Recycle Bin, so they can get them back. Additionally, you will not share or sync your Google Drive with any other drive. Everything seems to point to a rare and serious failure on Google Drive.
Yonjung tried to contact Google’s support team from South Korea, but to no avail. However, another user with the same problem and profile name ‘User 18316101495719567270’ said that the Google support team is “continuously monitoring this issue” and that this is not an isolated issue.
Apparently, the Google engineering team at Drive is trying to figure out what happened and recover the lost data. Likewise, they told him, “They are waiting for a root cause analysis to figure out how to solve it.” Google Support has asked the user not to make any changes to the Google Drive root/data folder until further notice.
So, if your Google Drive files are also deleted from anywhere, the only thing you can do is wait for a solution from Google. In the meantime, don’t do anything in Google Drive and don’t forget to report your issue from the Google Drive support website.
