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Forum Discussion
Mark H.2
11 years agoNew member | Level 1
Why did all of my files disappear?
A folder that is owned by me and shared with two others is now empty. What happened to all of my image files? How do I get them back?
- 9 years ago
As I am a basic user, the policy of dropbox says I can only recover the files deleted within 30days as they will be deleted for real!!! Can someone tell me whether this statement is really true or it is just bullshit and I might have chances to let the staff of dropbox to recover them?
That is correct. Basic accounts, or Pro accounts without the Extended Version History addon, can only recover files for 30 days from the date they were deleted. Beyond that they cannot be recovered, even by Dropbox staff.
- 7 years ago
rjothvas wrote:
... a Basic account that I haven't used in awhile ...
How long is a while? If an account remains idle for more than a year, Dropbox will remove it, which also removes all files from the system.
... and now it's telling mee that it can't find any of my folders, and dropbox made me use InstallerIs it possible that you started a new account, instead of signing into your old one? If the old one had been removed and you installed with the same email address, you would have started a new, empty account.
are my files now all gone? If not, where are they?If you're signing in with the same email address and the account is empty, then it's likely as I described above. Otherwise you can try checking the Events page and Deleted Files to see if the files are there, or see if it lists what happened. If both pages are empty (aside from anything new you've done), then you're in a new account.
Anne L.13
9 years agoNew member | Level 1
MASSIVE DELETION OF FILES--Over 45,000 files were deleted or moved from my computer following a computer crash due to a black-out. I'm not sure how the two incidents were related, but one hour after the electricity came back on I noticed I was missing massive amount of my files including years of documents, all my endnote libraries, and PDF articles (collected over 20 years). This occurred on Monday 9/19/16. I had trouble writing a ticket because they needed a recovery file url and the link to tell me how to get it was malfunctioning. So I wrote a general email and I heard back within hours. They asked me for more information which I supplied immediately. A helpful person (Callie or Regina) wrote me back on Wednesday. She said to go to the dropbox website and look at the "events." I did so. All at 12:09 pm 28,000 files were deleted, 21,000 files were restored and many of my shared files were unshared. (just to note that when files were restored, they showed up in random places all over under the wrong sub-folders.) Callie went over my options and said that I could restore individually deleted files, or, if there were too many "events or different types of "events" she could just decide to restore all files as of a certain data/time. I wrote back 24 hours ago choosing the second option since there were so many types of changes that all happened at once. Have heard nothing. This is a work disaster. No access to >28,000 files since Monday!!!!! It is teaching me a lesson. BACK-UP YOUR DROPBOX FILES ON YOUR OWN. I really hope Callie and/or Regina write me back soon.
- josemreuss7 years agoNew member | Level 2
Hi Anne L,
I had the same issue, how are you backing those files up? This is so frustrating.
Thanks for your help...
- Walter7 years agoDropbox Staff
Sorry to butt into this josemreuss but if you have had recent accidental deletions, I would advise to start by going to your Events page. This is the place where all changes such as edits, adds or deletes are logged and should point you toward the right direction.
Let me know what you find please and we'll take it from there. Thanks!
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