Hi Everyone. I had a hard drive failure and when the drive died Dropbox saw the missing files and began deleting them. I didn't catch it until about 60k of files were deleted from Dropbox. I have a paid account with 30 days of retention and when i go to deleted files it shows the files. I can restore them and it takes a few minutes and says they're restored but when I go back to my files they are not there. If I open up deleted files they are back there and and I can do the same thing, with the same results. Any Ideas? it deleted literally 4 months worth of work that would be nearly impossible to recreate. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Looks like all the files are back in their place. When drop box said they were restored it wasn't the case, it took a couple hours to restore everything. I REALLY wish Dropbox would have much better communication with their software and stated that it woudl take much longer to restore or show an hourglass or something.... Thank you to everyone that looked at this and hopefully this will help someone in the future!

Thanks for the reply. This was on the website with no devices connected. it took a few hours to restore about 40gb of data and there was no indication it was working other that random missing files appearing back into my files over a few hours.

i tried a few times to restore a huge batched of files, but after "successfully restored", they were not actually done but still in the "deleted files". what happened to it?

My guess is it is the same that happened to me. Everytime you refresh deleted files it will show less files to restore but there is no other indication it is working. I tried other browsers too and it didn't work. Definitely something on the Dropbox side

Hi Jane Masamba , Just wanted to suggest a few extra steps here, Jane. You mention a change in access message from the events page. A screenshot of what it says would be great to have for any clues we can spot there. Check with the other side if they can re-share, but also, from your Dropbox Home page, click on "Shared", then "Folders", and just verify that they aren't in a folder listed as "not added", or "you haven't joined yet". Don't worry, we'll get to the bottom of this!

Cannot Restore Deleted Files | The Dropbox Community

14 Replies

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SixtyFour
Helpful | Level 5
4 years ago
Looks like all the files are back in their place. When drop box said they were restored it wasn't the case, it took a couple hours to restore everything. I REALLY wish Dropbox would have much better communication with their software and stated that it woudl take much longer to restore or show an hourglass or something....

Thank you to everyone that looked at this and hopefully this will help someone in the future!
Mark
Super User II
4 years ago
Just to explain how this works.... Dropbox restores things quickly back to the website/cloud - however, it then takes time (sometimes) to restore back to connected devices as that part is linked to how quick peoples internet connection is 🙂
SixtyFour
Helpful | Level 5
4 years ago
Thanks for the reply. This was on the website with no devices connected. it took a few hours to restore about 40gb of data and there was no indication it was working other that random missing files appearing back into my files over a few hours.
MYDA
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
i tried a few times to restore a huge batched of files, but after "successfully restored", they were not actually done but still in the "deleted files". what happened to it?
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
4 years ago
Hey there, MYDA, I'd be happy to help with that!

Have you tried restoring the content from a totally different browser? If I were you, I'd also try an incognito tab on your current browser too.

Can you give this one a go, and update me on the results? Thanks!
SixtyFour
Helpful | Level 5
4 years ago
My guess is it is the same that happened to me. Everytime you refresh deleted files it will show less files to restore but there is no other indication it is working. I tried other browsers too and it didn't work. Definitely something on the Dropbox side
UzairH
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
This is not true in my experience. I cannot see my restored files on the website.
UzairH
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
This looks to be a bug and a very disconcerting bug.
Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
4 years ago
Hi UzairH, let’s check this together.

Can you please walk me through the exact steps that you took in order to restore your Dropbox files?

Did you receive any kind of error during the process perhaps?
Uzair H
New member | Level 2
4 years ago
I deleted files which went to the Trash folder. A few minutes later I realized I needed those files, so using the web interface I selected them and clicked restore.

My files took hours to restore, making me lose valuable time.

This is was a deal breaker for me and I have moved on to other cloud storage services now.

Thanks