[Fix] Google Drive Files Disappeared or Lost from Users Accounts

UPDATE: A new version of Google Drive is available for download which fixes the data loss issue for users. The article has been updated to include the download links and how-to instructions.

Hi, my Google Drive files suddenly disappeared. The Drive literally went back to condition in May 2023. Data from May until today disappeared, and the folder structure went back to status in May. Google Drive activity doesn’t show any changes (only shows activity that was in May). No files were deleted manually, so no files in Trash. I never synced or shared my files and drive to anyone, I used the drive locally. I followed recovery process that Google support team asked me(South Korea team). They put a recovery program and failed. They asked me to backup and restore DriveFS folder, nothing changed. I reported the issue to the Google support team probably in States and they asked me to report the issue to their engineer. But no answer from the engineer and cannot know whether they are reviewing my issue. I used the drive few days ago and last morning this horrible problem happened. Very devastating and the files are very important to me. Need any help to fix the problem. Thanks in advance for any help.

We have identified the issue impacting a small subset of Drive for desktop users on version 84, which only affected local file changes that had yet to be synced to Drive. This issue did not impact any file changes that had already synced and were visible on the Drive mobile app or within the Drive UI on the web.

We are working on a solution to make files available to users and expect the solution to be available in the next few days.

Do not click “Disconnect account” within Drive for desktop.

Do not delete or move the app data folder:

Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS

Optional: If you have room on your hard drive, we recommend making a copy of the app data folder.

My partner had the same problem. Took about 2 days but I managed to recover her stuff. The crux of the problem is that the desktop client has not uploaded your data to the cloud, and something in the latest version has reset your local profile. That means that your local, cached, un-uploaded files are now hidden away in a backup folder. Because of this, there’s nothing Google Support will be able to do. Below are the steps I took to recover the files.

1. Uninstall Google Drive.

2. Install an old version of Google Drive (there’s a version 82/83 floating around on the internet).

3. Disable the 2 Google Update services (they won’t be running, but they still need to be disabled). Use services.msc command.

4. Disable the Google Update scheduled tasks (2 of them). Use taskschd.msc command.

5. Make sure Google Drive is not running.

6. In the User Data folder, go into Google > DriveFS > the folder with a long number.

7. In that folder there’s a folder called backups, which has another folder with a couple of long numbers. Move all of the files from the “Backup” folder into the main folder (from step 6).

8. Start Google Drive.

9. Go into your G Drive (or wherever it is) and copy all data somewhere else outside of Google Drive. Due to the way that Google caches stuff, what you have locally will be your latest files. The problem looks to be that things weren’t being uploaded properly.

10. If you want to carry on using Google Drive, re-enable the update services and wait for Google Drive to update. It will then sign you out and reset your local state to what it had in the cloud.

11. Use a 3rd party data copy tool to overwrite the contents of your G Drive with what you had copied elsewhere.