Google is Investigating a Drive Data Loss Issue
- Paul Thurrott
- Nov 27, 2023
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23
Google today confirmed that it is investigating a data loss issue reported by multiple users of its Drive desktop client.
“We’re investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users and will follow up with more updates,” the Google Drive team wrote in a Google support forum. “In the meantime, do not click “Disconnect account” within Drive for desktop and do not delete or move the app data folder … If you have room on your hard drive, we recommend making a copy of the app data folder.
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The first data loss report appeared 6 days ago, and it was quickly followed up by several others with similar experiences, where users are reporting losing up to several months of data. It appears to impact users on both Windows and Mac, and possibly even some who only use the web client.
This is great timing for me: I just recommended Google Drive and have been moving more and more of my data from OneDrive to Google Drive to combat the growing enshittification of OneDrive in Windows 11. I’ve not seen this issue, thankfully, and I’d rather not. But hopefully, Google can get it fixed quickly.