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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?
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.
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.
I'm so sorry that also happened to you. there has got to be something we can do. I paid them 10+ a month for 2 years and all I got was all of my children's lives in pictures gone forever!!!
I restored files from my backup harddrive. Finally solved! But it will be hard for me to trust dropbox any more.
- Rich
Super User II
Dropbox is not capable of deleting your files on its own. Either you, another process on your computer or another device connected to your account had to have caused the deletion.
Start here:
- https://help.dropbox.com/security/missing-reappearing-corrupted-files
- https://help.dropbox.com/security/recover-deleted-files-folders
Dropbox lost several important documents since about Dec 23 (spreadsheets representing a lot of hard work) by somehow syncing incorrectly - I edited them extensively on one machine and later that day dropbox "synced" by reverting to the directory on a different machine. This lost all updates and all new files created.
This one disaster is enough for me, I'm out of dropbox, it is not reliable.
RCL
It happened to me too. It is not just shared folders most of my other folders do not have any files. I hope Dropbox keep their back up some where in a physical hard drive. Please upload and sync my files from October 2015. Rest of the files I shall take care of by myself.
I am an University Professor, do not have enough money to buy my personal cloud. Please HELP!!!!!
I just now noticed that I'm missing huge chunks of files - I don't know to what degree yet, but this is very troubling. I relied on Dropbox as a safety net for storing all of my files, since external harddrives (harddrives, in general) are unreliable. I now have to find a new solution. In the meantime, I guess I'll be spending my day assessing all the damage and start recovering what I can. Not cool Dropbox.
Does anyone have a suggestion for an additional backup, other than DVDs or external hard drive?
I just experienced this. I have dropbox installed on four machines. About an hour ago, my camera upload folder became empty. For some reason, the files are still available on one of the computers, but the other three computers all lost the files.
The system says it was done in the past hour by the computer that still has all the files. But I did not even turn that computer on in the past 4 hours. A closer look indicated that I was somehow kicked out from the shared folder (camera upload), even though I didn't share it with anyone. I went to my shared folder tap, found it, and rejoined, and got everything back. At this moment, all my computers are trying to download about 20gb worth of photos and videos.
I would like to know why this happened.
Same thing just happened to me. Files were disappearing from Dropbox while I watched. I was talking with the other person sharing a folder with me. The files were viewable by him but disappeared from my Dropbox. I went online and restored the files. Five minutes later, it happened all over again (but a different set of files disappeared from the folder. This is crazy. With thousands of files in multiple folders, it's impossible to know what is gone at this point. I guess I will be looking for an alternative to Dropbox.
