Google Drive Missing Files on the Desktop App? You Are Not Alone

Isaiah Richard, Tech Times 27 November 2023, 06:11 pm

If you have been seeing discrepancies and missing files on your Google Drive, it is not your internet or anything on your end, as others have reported the same case in their cloud-based storage app. Reports are claiming that files they uploaded in the past few days, months, and as much as years were non-existent in their respective Drives, and other users attest to this issue at hand.

To date, there are still no explanations as to how these files are getting lost mysteriously, especially for older files and not the most recent ones.

Drive is Missing the Files of Some Users in the Desktop App

(Photo : Google via Wikipedia Commons)

Over the past few days, users have taken their concerns of missing files on the Drive to Google's Community Forum, claiming that their uploads "suddenly disappeared." In their experience, the storage service lost their files from May 2023 until today, with the "folder structure went back to status in May."

They also added that their activity did not show any changes, and it is part of Google's feature to know what altercations, uploads, deletions, moving, and more, happened in the Drive. No files were also deleted as they claimed that there were no files in the Trash.

The user further added that the Drive was not in sync or shared with others, only used locally.

One of Google's fixes for the account was to undergo its recovery program but there claims to be no changes.

Other users have shared the same horror they experienced from the missing files on their respective Google Drive accounts, with others seeing the issue stem up to years ago of lost items.

Google Now Investigating Lost Files Issue

Google has acknowledged the issue via a reply on the thread by one of its employees, claiming that this issue is present on the Google Drive Desktop app, from version 84.0.0.0 to 84.0.4.0, citing a sync issue. While the company said that they are still investigating the issue, they offered some fixes, saying not to click "Disconnect account" and not delete these files:

Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS

Google Drive's Cloud-Based Storage

Over the years, Google has improved the features of the Drive and what it has to offer the world, especially with various features that help users organize files better, as well as find uploads easier. There is a feature called Location Picker for the Drive, and it offers a revamped experience for sorting files in one's account, with a quick selection function for a certain location.

However, earlier this year, Google imposed a cap on the files that users would upload to the cloud-based storage service, and no matter which plan you are on, from free to the largest allocation possible, there is a maximum. In the latest version of Drive, users may only upload a maximum of 5 million files, and its goal is to "maintain strong performance and reliability" of the service.

In the most recent updates for Drive, Google has added the power of its renowned generative AI to help users get an improved experience on its Workspace apps, and that includes Drive.

However, these recent complaints against Drive are something that worries users as either their files are misplaced or lost, with the missing case still under investigation by Google.