Can I restore the files that were stored in my account when I was deleted

[anhkhoavo1210]

Hello, I got my Dropbox account associated with my previous institution. I just left this institution a few days ago and realized that they just deleted all my Dropbox data. Since I have a lot of personal and important data therein, is there any way I can do to retrieve or download them? I am not sure if the institution deactivated or deleted the account.

I am waiting for the response from the institution, but also want to hear any resolution from the community. Thank you very much.

[anhkhoavo1210]

Thank you so much, Mark! I cannot go back in person, since I am out of state. I emailed them again and asked if they can consider helping me out. The IT help desk replied that they will check with the server team to see if they can do anything for me.

The great thing is I just found my old desktop. This desktop keeps my Dropbox data of 1 month ago. I am keeping this desktop offline so that I can copy the old data to another place. The only confusing thing is that when checking the size of the entire Dropbox folder, it shows 2 types: size (14.2 GB) and size on disk (2.59 GB). When trying to copy this folder, I can only see 2.59 GB copied instead of 14.2 GB. Since I am not an expert, I am not sure if this 2.59 GB is all the data or not. Can you please give me some advice on this matter? @Mark and @Walter

[Jay]

Hi @anhkhoavo1210, the difference in size means that some of the files were offline, and others were online-only. The local files would take up space, while the other files are just placeholders for the real files on the site.

This means that you only have 2.59 GB of actual data stored in your folder, and the rest would be only 1 KB in size, and contain no data in them.

[anhkhoavo1210]

Understood. So, the only way is to hope that my previous institution will help me out in this situation. Thanks a lot for the clarification.