Investigating the Google Drive Sync Glitch
The online community is on fire with discussions surrounding potential data loss on Google Drive, prompting the company to investigate reported "sync issues" affecting Google Drive. Users have expressed their concerns, with one emphasising the severity of the situation, claiming to have lost significant amounts of work spanning 1-2 years.
Reports on Google support forums have indicated the disappearance of up to six months' worth of data, leading to an ongoing investigation by Google.
This event is likely attributed to a bug causing the loss of data accumulated over the past few months, including documents, photos, and videos. The issue seems to impact users accessing Google Drive through desktop platforms in versions 84.0.0.0 through 84.0.4.0.
Google has acknowledged the issue through a post on the Google Drive help forums titled "Drive for desktop (v84.0.0.0 - 84.0.4.0) Sync Issue." The post indicates that Google is actively investigating the problem and commits to providing updates. The problem was initially brought to light by a user reporting the loss of all their Drive data dating back to May 2023, despite efforts from Google's support team to recover the data.
With 192 users reporting similar issues on the support thread, IT support faces challenges in retrieving the lost data. Google is actively seeking diagnostic data from affected drives to facilitate the investigation. Users are advised against disconnecting accounts, deleting, or relocating the app's data folder, with Google recommending the creation of backups in separate locations as a precautionary measure.
The complexity of the problem is heightened by the two different modes of operation in Drive for Desktop. The traditional "mirroring" mode maintains local copies of files on the hard drive, while the more recent default mode, "File Stream," stores files in the cloud, requiring a constant internet connection. If data loss occurs in “File Stream” mode, users may face the possibility of irrevocable file loss, as Drive actively removes files from the computer in this mode.
The Fixer Upper you Need!
While Google is aware of the issue, a timeline for a fix has not been provided, the bug has impacted both cloud storage and the desktop version of Drive causing concerns for the community if the data is recoverable. Cloud data should always be backed up and managed by the user, do not always rely on cloud services as bugs may happen once in a blue moon with Google, AWS, and Microsoft not being responsible for any data loss in the end.
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