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Forum Discussion
Randomly deleted files and folders
Anyone else experiencing files and folders being deleted from Dropbox without human intervention?
I know that I'm going to get the stock Dropbox answer here that it can't happen, but I can explicitly tell you it does.
What I saw was random deletions of over 10,000 files/folders in the space of less than 33 seconds. Even with the best will in the world - not to mention the fastest fingers - this just isn't possible. Especially considering that some complete folders, and in some cases just files within folders, disappeared at 13:30 BST yesterday, all within 33 seconds (according to the event log).
The kicker is that the only person who has access to these files/folders is me - and I know for sure that I didn't delete them.
I guess there may be 2 explanations:
1) I entered a fugue state and decided to delete all my work on a number of cases
2) Something is happening with the Dropbox software that either Dropbox don't know about or can't fix
Been trying to get Dropbox support to assist, but got the usual default customer service answer of "it's not us it's you". Well, I know it's not me - so by extension it must be the software!
Next step is to request a refund of my yearly plan as I cannot have something that intervenes in my workflow like this and then wastes half a day (and counting) trying to figure out what's missing. I guess the only silver lining is that I have a Dropbox business account, so files are kept forever. Small benefit, but a good one at this stage.
So, after my long winded moan above, anyone have a resolution to stop Dropbox from deleting things from my folders? Or is it just time to move on to another provider?
Finally, don't let anyone from Dropbox tell you differently (especially the "Super Users") as I can categorically say it happens. They'll tell you it can't, but I know for a fact that it can.
Best of luck and hoping you don't fall foul of the same problems I've had.
I see there are similar posts about this, and in some of them it's being put down to user error or the files being deleted by someone who shares a folder.
I just wanted to say that I've been using Dropbox for years, know how it works, and important work files that I would most CERTAINLY never have deleted recently disappeared from my Dropbox folder.
Also, I don't share my folders with anyone, so it's not that someone else is deleting them either.
Thankfully I was able to visit Dropbox via the website and undelete them. If not, I would have been in really serious trouble.
I just wanted to post this to show other people who are losing data that they are not alone.
I have to say that my confidence in Dropbox has taken a BIG knock. I've now started backing up my Dropbox folder to DVD on a regular basis - which, in a way, defeats the whole point of Dropbox for me.
I am having the same issue, have had dropbox for years and in the last 45 days my files start being randomly deleted. I don't have other users accessing the folders, so that is not the issue.
I keep opening tickets, but just keep getting sent links to the info I have already tried. Dropbox shows no deletion event, but the files are definitely missing. Anyone have an idea on how I can get my files back?
- Mark
Super User II
You can restore yourself via https://help.dropbox.com/delete-restore/recover-deleted-files-folders
In terms of the deletions have you noticed a pattern? File types? Location? Times? Days of week etc.?
- Mark
Dropbox cannot delete on its own. SOMETHING has to be doing it - see https://help.dropbox.com/delete-restore/missing-reappearing-corrupted-files
Risky A. wrote:
which, in a way, defeats the whole point of Dropbox for me.
Oh no, it really doesnt. Dropbox is NOT a backup tool and should never EVER be regarded as one. It is a syncing tool.
You should ALWAYS have multiple backups in place - regardless if you have Dropbox or not.
I have a Dropbox Business account and logged in today to find I'd lost over 50TB worth of files (within sub folders) from one of my team folders. Everything else seems untouched.
I tried the folder rewind function and it didn't work. Even if one of my team had accidentally deleted the files they should still be recoverable with the rewind function.????
One of my linked iMacs has 8TB in the "old_files" folder in the cache which were synced to that drive, but obviously not accessible now.
There is nothing in the "Activity" & "Events" sections to show that files have even been deleted, they have just vanished. There is nothing in the "deleted files" section too.
And the insights tab clearly shows a severe drop in used space;
It is impossible to contact support on the weekend, the closest I got was to a sales rep who was very dismissive, and I think may have accidentally swore at me;
This is so frustrating, not only to lose the files, but to not be able to contact support on the weekend. My business relies heavily on this folder and I am desperate to recover it ASAP.
Has anyone else experienced disappearing files like this? How did you recover them?
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hey Atmosphere, I'm sorry to hear about this large deletion, let's work together on resolving it!
As you noted the Rewind function sometimes may not work, if a deletion is very large, or if it has mixed events in it (moves, deletions etc) but in any case we are always here to help.
Our Support Team is indeed working only on weekdays, and not weekends but you should be able to contact them about this issue today, using this page.
I would also suggest you check your Events' page if you wish to have a clear idea on what might have happened. The Events page at gives you an overview of all activity in your account including files events (adds/edits/deletes), as well as adding or removing shared folders.
Lastly, was this folder a shared one? If yes, can you also check the Sharing page on the web, to see if you have the option to add the folder?
I’m looking forward to hearing back from you on this discussion!
So this is what i got from sugarsync this morning - sounds like a totally reasonable task... bahahaha. i have hundreds of folder and sub folder... so let's pick a task that is not rational to perform and call the case closed... - how goes it at the dropbox end??? Apparantly we are ANOTHER PART OF THE WORLD... soon to be seperated by a wall I suppose... but really... had a good chuckle and thought I would share.
Thank you for contacting SugarSync Technical Support. I'm sorry to hear you have been having difficulty, but I'm happy to help.
That error is experienced by customers that are located in other parts of the world where there are special characters in their alphabet. The reason the error crops up is because when SugarSync experiences any of those special characters that it is not coded to recognize, it throws that log error, which essentially means "I don't understand what this means". It is not an error in the sense that it will stop SugarSync from running properly, it may just take time for SugarSync to realize that the special character it is seeing somewhere is valid and works.
Unfortunately the logs will just continue to process that information because at this current time SugarSync is not fully supported in every language and area of the world.
We suggest you can try to set the language to American English to see that changes anything. One thing we can think of is the date format is different for America as opposed to Canada. America uses MM/DD/YYYY as opposed to Canada uses DD/MM/YYYY.
If you have any further questions, please let us know. Thank you for using SugarSync!@CMK77
I love that a software says it's because of the date structure! The whole world, except the USA, uses DD/MM/YY as the format - so what they are saying is that if you're not in the US, you shouldn't use their software?
Sounds like they have the same bug in their software - which clearly is your fault for using a standard naming structure :-)
So it's not just Dropbox that is doing this...
It's a real problem - but obviously one these companies don't want to admit exists.
Haven't had any of the "Super Users" from these forums back on - guess they don't have a cut and paste answer to give when someone challenges their assertions.
Will keep trying to find what does this but not optimistic. As I've said before, I'm not a computer tech. Will have a look at other solutions to see if they are encountering the same problems and report back when I've had a chance to look through. Going to be very, very, very careful around reading all the comments for each company to see if users have experienced the same problems. Should have vetted Dropbox more thoroughly before I signed up - a mistake I won't make again!
Cheers
- Rich
currentcapital wrote:
I know that I'm going to get the stock Dropbox answer here that it can't happen, but I can explicitly tell you it does.
It doesn't. If files have been deleted, then either you, another process on your computer or another device linked to your account had to initiate it. Dropbox cannot delete your files without being told to.
Restore one of the files that was deleted, then look at the previous version history for that file. It will tell you where the deletion originated from (hover your cursor over the timestamp to the right). If it shows you or your computer as the one that deleted it, and you didn't do it, then something on your computer did.
If you're a Dropbox for Business customer, you have access to phone support. Have you called yet? The phone number and required PIN can be found in your admin console under Help.
- I know what I did or did not do, and thanks for the condescending reply. Have seen it other places in these forums. Very helpful.
Only process that could be doing this is a Dropbox process, so I guess in a way it is a process on my PC that's at fault.
Software bug in Dropbox then?- Wowee - I was just going to switch to drop box for business because my current software sugar sync has the same issue - but it seems to just pick a file here and there - so I have stuff missing that I didn't even know because I don't work on files continously - so something that both programs use in algorithm seems to be haywire - really doubt that computers randomly delete data - did you try to locate the initiating device / process - I am curious what the outcome was - the whole point is securing and syncing data - this seems to be exactly the opposite - I also keep another backup drive - but jeepers we should not have to... Now I really don't know what other service there is that doesn't have the same hiccup - have you found alternatives with more favorable reviews??? Hope you get it sorted. M
I just upgraded to pro and while deleting one small file several large FOLDERS were deleted (about 2-3 hours ago). I certainly did not have them checked to delete and some had personal business files/folders that I had set up a couple of years ago for security. Now the files are gone forever I am afraid. Just last night and today I had spent hours on a multiple folder collection containing pictures from a special event. These were important and do not even show up in the deleted folder so I can't reinstall them. The reinstall is working as I checked it by reinstalling another folder that was uninstalled previously.
So, I just had the same thing happen in a matter of seconds as you did. Any answers so far?
Yes, they were random also. Date: 1-17-2017
@Ann B.17
Unfortunately no answer for you yet. And don't hold out hope that Dropbox support will help either.
The only thing I can suggest is to get a list of the events and ask Dropbox support to do the reinstall. It puts everything back where it was at that time, which hopefully will give you back the files/folders you lost.
I'm using Dropbox for Business, but assume Pro will have a similar structure:
Let me know how you get on - hopefully everything comes back for you.
Cheers
I'm getting weird things going on as well: folders/files appearing in my dropbox root directory without me doing anything -- because I have thousands of subdirectories and 10's of thousands of files, I don't know if these files got moved from lower directories or are old things I deleted.
By looking at the creation dates of these "new" folders and files in my MAC I can see this all appeared at the same time, 1 am some morning, when the only device I have that can access/change files had been powered down for hours.
I've sent more than 6 message to drobox "support" in the last week and have yet to have a coherent response.
And, it gets better, now all those files folders that appeared before, have magically disspeared, with no record of any of this occuring on the dropbox website "events" log (I have tested to see if all folder/file creations/deletions/moves that I initiate appear on same and they do...)
Dropbox is of no help -- I am going to quick mirror my drive and discontinue this service.
I have had a similar incident of thousands of files and directories being deleted. I believe I was attacked by a computer somehow logging on from the US since a Mac user shows as being logged on. There doesn't seem to be ANY way of getting through to some sort of real person at Dropbox to help, just a computerized virtual person with platitudes.
@MichaelF
That sounds to me like a hack, but not being a computer tech, I'd be hesitant to confirm it. Usual advice that I've received is to change the passwords, which I know doesn't help right now but could do in the future.
With regards to getting the files restored, hopefully you're able to do so via the console but if not, then ask on the support site to have the whole events restored. Be aware that it will take them ages to reply and to action, but this is really the only way.
Best of luck!
K.
@Watts H
I'd love to be able to answer with "why" this happens but frankly I've got no idea.
There are lots of threads on this, but as you have probably seen from the Dropbox "support" (quotation marks intentional), you get the whole answer that "Dropbox cannot delete files. It must have been you, while sleepwalking, that powered your computer up, deleted some random files/folders, powered it down, then went back to bed"
Because clearly that's what happened. There can't be any other reason, right? Nothing to do with the software obviously.
Don't blame you for moving on to another software - I'm in the process of trying to find one that does what I need it to do, without deleting files then saying that in my fugue state, I did it all. No offer of looking into it obviously, just a sure fire answer of "it's not us - it's you!"
Best of luck
I have computers on syncing on both Windows 10 and Mac Sierra computers. Mid-day yesterday, about 8,000 files and directories were deleted in a single dropbox event. The files appear to have been deleted in alphabetical order over the course of a few minutes. I know it was not the result of human interaction because the deletes took place across hundreds of directories. Some files and folders in these directories were deleted and others were left untouched. Moreover, I was out of the office when the event happened. All the deletes appear as a single event in dropbox.
On my Windows 10 computer, I noticed the Dropbox app was not running (perhaps had crashed) and had not been running for a while, probably around 12 hours). I restarted the app manually probably an hour before the mass random file deletion took place.
This type of random deletion cannot be attributed to human error so it must be a bug. Where do I report bugs?
Is there a way to undo an event in dropbox? If not, how do I get my files restored in an efficient manner? It would take days to manually restore using the links in the event. I can't do a bulk restore because then I would still need to sift through my restored files and redelete thousands of files.
The same thing happened to me. Many files and folders deleted, then restored incompletely and randomly. I did not delete these files. Some have been duplicated, some deleted completely. It has happened in both shared and unshared folders. This is not a syncing issue. I have used Dropbox for years and nothing like this has ever happened. Dropbox tech support is very unhelpful so far.
We are in the same boat. Dropbox "help" has consisted mostly of canned chats and email responses and refusal to give a call back. I've been very disappointed. Our mass deleted docs were also restored randomly and out of place. Once we tried to move them all around appropriately on a desktop version, caused another mass deletion online. No satisfactory explanation from dropbox. Service used to be much better. I hope they acknowlege the cause and get everyone assisted that is having this problem.
- Mark
It isnt a bug - it isnt possible to delete files on Dropbox without SOME sort of interaction from a computer or a person. You can go to a file that was deleted via www.dropbox.com/home , click on 'Show Deleted files' and then one of them thats deleted and look at the previous versions. That shows which devices/users instigated the delete command.
Is your Dropbox on an external or network drive? Or, does it contain junctions/symlinks? Thats what usually causes these.
And you can request a rollback at https://help.dropbox.com/delete-restore/recover-deleted-files-folders- I'm not using any symlinks. Some of the files might be shared in a homegroup but not the affected folder.
The deletion operation interaction must have been from a computer as opposed to a user. As I indicated the manner in which the files were deleted, certain files and folders several branches down, while other folders in the same subfolders were unaffected. Again, based on the timestamps on the affected folders (i.e. the modified timestamp updated because subfolders and files were deleted) the time seem to roll in an alphabetical order over the course of a few minutes which would indicate a sync operation. I agree with your statement that it is unlikely that the cloud deleted the files out of the blue, it appears that the app is likely what caused the change since it appears that the deletions took place at about the same pace as a sync operation. Is it possible that starting dropbox on the second computer where it had apparently crashed earlier and was hadn't been running for a day caused a problem? Are their client side sync metadata files that could have been corrupted or gotten out of sync? Perhaps something happened to the metadata on those files on the offline computer and dropbox misunderstood the metadata and deleted the files as part of its sync operation?
I went to the link help link you shared and don't see a rollback option there. Right now we are starting the process of manually restoring the files from the delete event page. Thanks for your reply and help.
- I went back into my folders to get some master video files and they are gone...It appears as if the ones that were just loosely put in my dropbox they are still there, but some of my larger video files are gone. just empty folders left...Help. I am the only one with access and i know i didn't delete them...100%. I may lose business over this...not good. went into my events and nothing unusual
Exactly the same happened to me this week. Hundreds of files, all Word + Excel docs vanished into thin air!! The folders are all there, other files extensions like PDF or jpeg are there but they don't concern me there's maybe 20-30 files of that kind, the W +E files are the ones I used for my client work.
I am absolutely fuming that I keep getting responses that have nothing to do with solving the issue and taking responsibility.If a person is a single user of a folder of course the events log will say "You added or You deleted" but I well know I did not do anything, I wasn't even at my computer at the time it happened and I was home so there's no chance someone sat at my computer and started moving things, plus it all happened in a few minutes....apparently in 1 minute alone "I" moved and equally deleted over 100 files...that's physically impossible!!
Now I see others experienced the same, so I too would like for Dropbox to start taking responsibility, but first off they need to restore all the files where they were, this is despicable!!
And thinking I was even considering moving to Dropbox for work.
Not after this experience!- As I initially started this thread, I will throw my two cents in here.
Short answer - Dropbox support are absolutely no use. Back everything up to hard drive, cancel your dropbox account and move to a different supplier.
I've got things running on Sync.com and everything seems to be working as it should be. They even encrypt everything end to end and charge less than the buggy Dropbox system.
Hope this helps - Jane
Hey
Yes, Dropbox help totally useless, to the point of being comically bad: multiple emails from different "customer service" staff insisting they would help, with NONE of them responding to the very clear details I laid out and requests made for their help. Literally, after weeks of correspondance, NOT ONE DROP BOX STAFF MEMBER responded in any coherent way at all.
At some later point, all of the folders that had been moved/altered then "mysteriously" dissappeared from my dropbox root folder. HUH? (dropbox staff going in to "clean up" screw up? -- no idea...)
My lesson here: Dropbox CANNOT BE USED FOR CRITICAL BACKUP: the system will corrupt, relocate, and potentially delete or alter files by itself, and they have no ability to research, confirm, reverse, monitor, or protect against such events. Because this is a "mirroring" system, these faults in Dropbox will potentially result in permanant loss of important data.
- Jane
Hey
- A several weeks ago I got message saying a couple of thousand files were deleted. I took option to restore all. Thought no more about it till yesterday when looking at folders of photos and found random subfolders reported 'Folder is empty'. Too late to try to restore again. I've got them elsewhere so I think I can recover. I'm using Dropbox from windows 10, and IOS. Is it a syncing/file indexing issue? Power of Dropbox is use on several devices and increasing number of apps allowing updating. So I guess a nightmare to ensure integrity.
16/12/2017
