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currentcapital's avatar
currentcapital
Helpful | Level 6
8 years ago

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 expl...
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  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    7 years ago
     
    Hey Daz, 
     
    Welcome to the Dropbox Community, let me send over some tips below regarding your inquiry and we’ll take it from there! 
     
     SKBJ ‘s reply could point you towards the right direction, though you may need to dig deeper, depending on the behavior you’ve noticed. 
     
    Firstly, as Dropbox syncs any files added to it, a virus or malicious software would get updated to all computers linked to the account accordingly. If the virus or malicious software is in a shared folder, shared folder members and computers may also be affected. That being said, I’d strongly recommend removing it as soon as possible, as it’ll definitely create more issues in the long run. 
     
    Secondly, it recently came to attention that connecting or pointing external locations (i.e. Symlinking them) to your Dropbox folder might cause unexpected behavior, so it may appear to you as if files are randomly deleted. That being said, I’d advise you to have a look intro this as well, just as a possible scenario. 
     
    Regardless of the cause, if you need further clarifications or you’d like your account reverted back to a particular point in time, my advice would be to reach out directly to our team, who’ll guide you through the necessary steps and actions you’d need to take, so as to revert back to normal operations. 
     
    If you decide to go per my advice above, you may keep in mind that I’m always here to pursue a resolution, so please let me know a ticket ID I could reference in your next reply. 
     
    I’m looking forward to hearing back from you on this discussion! 
Watts H.'s avatar
Watts H.
Helpful | Level 6

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.

 

 

currentcapital's avatar
currentcapital
Helpful | Level 6
8 years ago

@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

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