Google Drive users are reporting the loss of months of data

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If you have a Google Drive account, it's probably worth backing up your files.

Google Drive on a phone next to a laptop.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Google's cloud storage Drive platform is losing serious amounts of customer files without warning, the Register reports Several user reports have come up on the Google support page, complaining about lost files, with one user in particular losing data as far back as May 2023. Google has confirmed that it is tracking the problem but did not provide a schedule for a possible fix.

Complaints started rolling in exactly six days ago when user Yeonjoong posted a complaint on the Google support forums reporting six months of lost data inside his/her Google Drive account. A few days later, numerous user responses came in on the same post detailing similar situations. Many reported the loss of critical work-related files, while the worst reports involved years or thousands of documents going missing from their respective Google Drive accounts.

To make matters worse, users are also reporting lost files with Google Drive's desktop application, which makes a duplicate copy of a user's cloud storage on his/her location machine.

Data loss can be dire, especially for businesses or for files that are important to individuals, like family photos, resumes, or anything else you thought might be safe in a cloud backup. Google is monitoring the situation, but it is looking like data restoration for affected customers might not be possible depending on how things go. 

Problems like this are always a good reminder to back up your important data no matter what, even if it's stored in the cloud. Just because data is stored in the cloud doesn't mean it is completely safe. There have been multiple cases of data loss over the past years from reputable cloud storage providers, leading to thousands of dollars in downtime and lost work.

A poster claiming they heard from Google's support claims the company is monitoring the situation and is investigating the problem with its project engineers. In a best-case scenario, everyone affected will get their files back, but in a worst-case scenario, Google won't be able to recover any lost files at all.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • PEnns
    Sooner or later....it's bound to happen.

    People and companies seem to forget (or willfully ignore) that "The Cloud" is just a fancy name for "Someone Else's Server".
    Reply
  • BX4096
    Don't you worry, the invisible men in the cloud took all your data straight to data heaven.

    If you behave, you may just see it in the next life.
    Reply
  • ravewulf
    Small suggestion, using "his/her" disrupts the flow of the article a bit; using the singular "their" would be less clunky.
    Reply
  • AgentBirdnest
    Yikes... I've never had any trouble with my Google Drive yet. This news is unpleasant.
    It's one of my 4 backups, so I wouldn't lose anything if there's a problem. It'd just be an annoyance to have to re-upload stuff, since my upload speed isn't the fastest.
    Reply
  • vern72
    Stories like this needs to get out to the general public so that they will make their own backups.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Somewhere around 6-8 months ago, I found missing & corrupt files on my Microsoft OneDrive account, at work. The folders where I noticed the problems weren't business-critical, luckily. The next day, things seemed to be back to how I expected them, so I don't know if I just happened to check on them while things were somehow in flux, or if the problem was detected and the files restored from backup. I'm hoping everything was recovered, though I don't have any way to be certain.

    Needless to say, it definitely shook my confidence. OneDrive is the only place they provide for us to keep our normal files, like documents, spreadsheets, etc. We're not allowed to back them up anywhere else! Only if it's something like source code, could we put it in a Github Enterprise repository.

    BTW, I also somewhat recently discovered some 15-year old emails had gotten corrputed, in an old Hotmail account. Hotmail is owned by Microsoft and has now been transitioned into their Office 365 product.
    Reply
  • HaninTH
    bit_user said:
    BTW, I also somewhat recently discovered some 15-year old emails had gotten corrputed, in an old Hotmail account. Hotmail is owned by Microsoft and has now been transitioned into their Office 365 product.

    I'm honestly surprised they even kept the data going that far back. I would have figured they'd have dumped it or "asked" you to back it up when they dumped all of the email domains on to Azure.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    HaninTH said:
    I'm honestly surprised they even kept the data going that far back. I would have figured they'd have dumped it or "asked" you to back it up when they dumped all of the email domains on to Azure.
    I never received such a notice. Old emails are going to be small and therefore cheap for them to carry forward. Remember, they had limits on how big your mailbox could be.

    People have an expectation that their emails will be retained, absent a policy to the contrary. Consider personal emails exchanged with family members who may no longer be with us. If they were on my local computer, I'd back them up. However, with them already in the cloud, I figured my backups were less reliable than letting Microsoft handle it.
    Reply
  • HaninTH
    bit_user said:
    Consider personal emails exchanged with family members who may no longer be with us. If they were on my local computer, I'd back them up. However, with them already in the cloud, I figured my backups were less reliable than letting Microsoft handle it.

    I never depend on anyone else with data I feel is important to me. Nor have I ever operated with the assumption that my data is safe anywhere other than on my various backup repos. Even then, I'm praying the advertised longevity of the storage mediums are as good as they say they are.

    It's like from another article on TH where users kept personal data on work computers and are shocked by the lack of concern the IT team at their workplaces have for their personal data on a work supplied computer. It should never have been there to begin with.

    Something about assuming...
    Reply
  • bit_user
    HaninTH said:
    I never depend on anyone else with data I feel is important to me. Nor have I ever operated with the assumption that my data is safe anywhere other than on my various backup repos. Even then, I'm praying the advertised longevity of the storage mediums are as good as they say they are.
    Well, you've got to test your backups! If you're not going to test them, then you ultimately have yourself to blame if they're bad.

    See? The bar is very high, for doing your own backups. Most people won't bother with backups, much less going the whole way of checking them and having off-site backups, too. There are other things in life.
    Reply