Google issues warning to ‘never press this button’
Google Drive users have been warned never to click a certain button as dozens of users have lost months of work from the system.
In a statement issued last night, Google said it is investigating reports of missing personal files from its popular cloud service.
One user said they had lost six months worth of business, while 268 users have so far clicked ‘I have the same question’ on a thread about the problem on Google’s community support site.
Writing on the company’s help centre, Google staffer Saitej said: ‘We’re investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users and will follow up with more updates.’
Google has not revealed how many users may have been affected.
However, Saitej also offered a stark warning for all Google Drive users, telling them not to click on the ‘disconnect account’ button within Drive for desktop – and did not say whether this could be reversed if users accidentally did.
And unfortunately for the user who originally flagged the issue, the Google support team had already told him to do just that.
Writing on the help site, Yeonjoong said his Google Drive activity didn’t show any changes, and no files were deleted manually, so could not be retrieved from Trash.
He described the loss as ‘very devastating, the files are very important to me’.
Replying to Saitej, he said: ‘The Google support team already ask me to “Disconnect account” within Drive for desktop after backup DriveFS folder. and re-paste it in the same place.
‘Will it be a problem?’
Saitej has not yet replied publicly.
However, in his original post he also advised users not to delete or move the app’s data folder, which can be found in:
- %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS for Windows
- ~/Library/Application for MacOS
On the main issue of lost files, Google said it relates to versions 84.0.0.0 to 84.0.4.0.
Another user said his partner had suffered the same issue, but after two days managed to recover her files by uninstalling Google Drive and reinstalling an older version.
Some users have speculated whether the loss of files is related to Google’s upcoming purge of inactive accounts.
From Friday, it will begin deleting millions of Gmail accounts that haven’t been logged into for at least two years as part of a major security update.
MORE : Google issues warning to the millions of people using ChatGPT
MORE : Google reveals three red flags your Gmail could have been hacked
MORE : Google issues urgent warning to Android WhatsApp users