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Files are being deleted on their own and it's been happening for some time now
i am not deleting the file but Files in my dropbox are automatically deleted , deleted files donot carry any name ie who deleted. There seems to be major Bug .. This is happening for past 3-4 months
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey Bach Huy Hoang, if you go through s restored file's version history, you should see more info, like the name of the device the files were deleted from; perhaps that will give you some more insight as to what happened.
I got an answer from dropbox support and I also looked at the version history. But it doesn't solve the question of why thousands of files can be deleted at once. Delete many folders in many places, and delete files in many folders but do not delete the folder.
It could just be the machine doing it. Suppose you have 1000 folders with deleted files in them, deleting files randomly and not in order, is it possible for a human to do that once?
Are there any computer viruses that do this? Or is there a problem with Dropbox? I'm quite confused and worried.
- Megan
Hey Bach Huy Hoang, on our end we wouldn't be able to identify why this is happening, just the device this is happening from.
It might be a shared folder, where members are deleting content, or even another program that edited or deleted the content.
Do you have antivirus software or another cloud provider, such as Time Machine, local backup software?
These might delete files depending on their own settings.
- I don't share Dropbox with anyone, I only use the computer. I use Dropbox for important files and folders. Icloud and googledrive are only used on the web and synchronized with phones. I'll check my computer for viruses or something like that. Anyway, thank you for your help.
- Jay
Aside from viruses, there could be other factors at work here. Have you confirmed according to the version history that the files are being deleted by that specific machine on your account?
Is the Dropbox folder on an external drive? Are you using any kind of virtual machine or remote login of any sort? Since the deletion of files appears to be random, do you have any programs which could quarantine or move files out of the Dropbox folder for any reason?
- According to version history, the computer that deleted the file was mine. The dropbox folder is located on a fixed hard drive in the computer. I do not install remote monitoring or control software on my computer. The time to delete files is when I'm listening to music online and I'm doing other things away from the computer. I only installed office, adobe, coreldraw. I regularly upgrade windows as suggested, will this have any effect? If you haven't found the cause yet, the first thing to do is regularly check the deleted files section on the dropbox website. Anyway, thank you for your help.
- Jay
Upgrading Windows wouldn't change anything on your machine to such an extent. Are these the same files being deleted each time, or is it completely at random?
One remote possibility is that the files can't be read for whatever reason, which could indicate a potential hardware issue (as in, the hard drive can't read those files if the drive is very old).
- Your comments about the hard drive I find to be quite reasonable for my problem. I will monitor the hard drive for any problems. When using it, I have not seen any slowness or errors in the computer.
