Google Drive Loses Months of Data of Some Users
In some cases, the data loss issues have gone back as far as May 2023.
- Google’s Drive platform has unexpectedly lost significant volumes of customer files, resulting in several complaints on the company’s support page.
- Google support forums show that up to 6 months’ worth of data has been misplaced, with an investigation at Google being underway.
Google’s Drive cloud storage platform users have reported a significant issue with several accounts. Apparently, a bug has resulted in the loss of data stored over the past few months, including documents, photos, and videos. So far, the issues have been found to affect only those users accessing Google Drive through desktop platforms in versions 84.0.0.0 through 84.0.4.0.
Google has acknowledged the issue and has initiated an investigation to fix the problem with a community support thread. The problem initially came to light with a user losing all of their data on Drive dating back to May 2023. The data was not recovered despite efforts from Google’s support team.
So far, 192 users have clicked the “I have the same question” button on the support thread, with IT support, in many cases, being unable to retrieve the lost data. Google has asked for diagnostic data from the drives to investigate the matter. Google has also warned users against disconnecting their accounts or deleting or relocating the app’s data folder. The company has further recommended that users create a backup in separate locations as a precaution.
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While Google has stated that it is aware of the problem, it has not provided a timeline for a fix. In addition, the desktop version of Drive makes a copy of a user’s cloud storage on the local device, but the bug has also impacted this feature. It is possible that the lost data might never be recovered, making a timely fix all the more important.
The issue highlights the importance of multiple backup data sources, especially for sensitive data. It also focuses on the vulnerabilities of the increasingly popular cloud storage services operating worldwide.
What measures are needed to improve data loss redundancy? Let us know your thoughts on LinkedIn, X, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
Image source: Shutterstock
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