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Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
7 years ago

Dropbox deleted all my files!

No, we didn’t.   Now that the clickbait worked, let’s get into the meat of the article.   I know there’s a lot of frustration about how ‘Dropbox deleted all my files’. I accept it’s hard to l...
Delete
Restore
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    7 years ago

    But, how can my file be deleted?

     

    A few ways actually…
     
    Firstly, if you install your Dropbox folder to an external drive, then there are always deletion risks, and I have listed them in a separate thread, which can be found here. However, I’ll repeat them in this thread later for the sake of convenience.
     
    Secondly, when I talk about deletions, I literally mean this definition: “Dropbox cannot see the file any more, so the file is deleted”.
     
    The question you should be asking is, “Why cannot Dropbox see the file? Where did it go?”
     
    Deletions to Dropbox mean any deletions done on the site, the mobile app, third party apps, and of course the desktop app.
     
    All of these versions connect to Dropbox in more-or-less same way, meaning that they detect changes, and then change the files on the site, which then syncs to all devices.
     
    I know you’ve heard this all before, but this is an incredibly important thing to understand.
     
    Syncing only acts if there is something to sync. 
     
    The app doesn’t do things on its own because it feels like it. If you’re staring at an empty spreadsheet, it’s not going to suddenly populate with your numbers and bar charts. A blank Word document doesn’t begin typing out your final year dissertation without your input.
     
    The opposite is also true, a document doesn’t slowly delete characters until you’ve lost all your writing, or formulas, without you touching the keyboard.
     
    This is just how Dropbox works, except for entire files and folders. If you’re staring at your Finder or Windows Explorer window blankly for an hour, even outside the Dropbox folder, (almost) nothing will change in front of your eyes, since you’re not using the computer.
     
    I mention the ‘almost’ part, since this is the crux of the matter. Narrowing down what made this ‘almost nothing’ to ‘definitely something’ is the goal of this post.
Deskal's avatar
Deskal
Explorer | Level 4

I have been using DB since it was first released. I have two devices linked to my account; a MacBook Pro (MBP) and a Mac Pro (MP). My DB folder contains subfolders holding > 50K photos over 23 years. I was importing new photos from my camera to the MBP and looked at DB activity to see how long the new upload would take, when I noticed DB was deleting files at pace. I immediately paused sync to investigate. I went to my MP and saw that DB was deleting random photos across multiple folders. I stopped sync on the MP and found that over 31,000 photos had been deleted. My photo folder was now 300 GB smaller. I restarted sync and could see the top folder shrink in size. I paused sync again on the MP and went back to my MBP and could see that the file deletion began on the MP (which I hadn't used for 2 days) 2 hours previously, and propagated to the MBP. I remained on the MBP and went online to DB web and checked the deleted files section and saw that over 31,000 files had been deleted in the past 2 hours. One of those deletion events was for a single deletion of 25,100 files spread across more that 200 folders, So, impossible to achieve by an external deletion. Also, my bins were empty on both machines. I restored the files using the desktop web on my MBP. The restore hung after 2 hours and when I reloaded the web app, there were no files in the deleted folder on the web, and it appeared that all files had been restored to my MBP. I resumed sync on the MBP and it continued to delete files!!. I went back to my MP and files had not been restored. When I restarted sync on the MP, files continued to be deleted and my folder size continued to shrink on my MP. I let sync delete a few hundred files and then went onto the web app - and the latest deleted files did not appear in the deleted web folder. I spent a lot of time with support without a satisfactory resolution. The agent continued to blame an unnamed third party app. Had I not noticed the DB activity, all 50K photos would have been deleted from both Macs. I have lost confidence in DropBox. Can anyone suggest a likely cause?

EvanDBX's avatar
EvanDBX
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
2 years ago

Deskal, thanks for posting and I am really sorry to hear about this issue.

 

I moved your post to a thread where  has already listed the most common reasons on how a deletion can happen.

 

Let me know if any of this helps!

  • PUZZLED_NEWBY's avatar
    PUZZLED_NEWBY
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago

    Like I said, this is not an answer.   Either you KNOW what Dropbox does, or you don't.  Moving my question elsewhere is useless.

     

    I therefore assume that you do not know the answer.

     

    Or you just can't be sure, because, guess what, in my experience with Dropbox I find that I cannot be sure either.

     

    I am really surprised that there are no answers to this. 

     

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