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Forum Discussion
I'm trying to recover some files from my Mac desktop on Dropbox
I'm trying to recover some files from my Mac desktop on dropbox. The folder structures and containers for the files are showing up in dropbox, but the files themselves are missing from the folders. T...
Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffSorry to see that your files are missing, o_mj.
You mentioned the Desktop folder; were these files added to your Dropbox account through the backup feature or did you manually move them to your Dropbox folder?
If they are backups, are you able to access them from this page?
How long ago did you last access them in Dropbox?
Let me know what you find.
Hi Hannah,
It must have been through the backup feature because to be honest i didn't even realise i was using Dropbox until i saw the files in my local dropbox folder two days ago before they disappeared.
Through the backups page i can access some files from my desktop but not all of them, even though the folders the missing files should be in are showing up.
I last accessed the files on my computer two days ago (Mon 22nd Sept), but I'm not sure I had ever accessed them on Dropbox before as i didn't realise i was using Dropbox.
- Hannah
I see, thanks for the update, o_mj.
Have you looked in your Trash, to see if you can find them there?
Also, do you see any events related to those files in your Dropbox events page?
Unfortunately they're not in my trash, and they're also not on the events page.
At the time of these files disappearing I only had the free Dropbox plan (I've upgraded since in the hope of recovering them); in looking back through my Dropbox notifications it says from 7 months ago "Heads up- your account is out of storage space. Files are no longer syncing across devices".
Does this mean they never existed on a Dropbox server?
This is really my last resort- I've been to the Apple store and they had no idea what happened and nothing they tried worked, and I've also tried third-party file recovery software on my Mac and that hasn't resulted in the files surfacing either.
If i have to pay more to retrieve the files from Dropbox I'm happy to, I just don't want to pay more and more for 'better' plans if there's no chance of recovering the files in the first place.
- Rich
Super User II
o_mj wrote:
... it says from 7 months ago "Heads up- your account is out of storage space. Files are no longer syncing across devices". Does this mean they never existed on a Dropbox server?
If your Dropbox stopped syncing because you were out of storage, any new or changed files on your computer would never have made it to the Dropbox servers. If they were later deleted, Dropbox wouldn't be able to recover them because they never existed on the servers.
