I added files from my external hard drive to my computer, but now they're gone.

Help2025 wrote:

The reddit community said that there's a glitch in the system and if I removed a hard drive during the dropbox sync, the dropbox files will be deleted.

This only applies if you have your Dropbox folder stored on the external drive. If your Dropbox folder is on the external drive and the drive is removed while Dropbox is running, then Dropbox can see it as a mass deletion.

If your Dropbox folder is not stored on the external drive, then this does not apply to you. There is nothing you can do on your external drive that would affect Dropbox.

Nothing is on the Dropbox Backup page. 

I will try to make this more clear. 

• I did some work on the files in my dropbox on 12/30 and saved the work.
• On 12/31, I plugged in my external hard drive, moved some pictures from the external hard drive to icloud.
• Unplugged the external hard drive when the transfer was complete.
• On 1/12, when I went to dropbox, my files that were created from 2019 to 2025 were gone.  Not recently deleted, just gone.
• To remedy the problem of my dropbox files being gone, I looked on reddit for help.  The reddit community said that there's a glitch in the system and if I removed a hard drive during the dropbox sync, the dropbox files will be deleted.
• My files on dropbox from 2019 to 12/31/24 are gone.

Hi Help2025, so just to confirm what you said, you didn't upload anything to Dropbox just now, since you were trying to upload files to iCloud instead, and you're asking to see if somehow Dropbox made a backup of your files?

Do you see anything on Dropbox Backup on this page, if you enabled it previously? Do you see any recent events or deleted files like my colleague suggested?

I dragged the pictures from my external hard drive to iCloud. Didn’t do anything with Dropbox. 

Hey Help2025, I hope it's okay to jump in here.

Can you please clarify how you added the files to your Dropbox account?

Did you drag and drop them to your Dropbox folder from iCloud?

Before disconnecting your external hard drive, did you see that your files were fully synced to your Dropbox account?

If they didn't have time to sync, I'm afraid they won't be recoverable through Dropbox.

I transferred all of my pictures from my external hard drive to the icloud on 12/31.  When I went into my dropbox for my work files on 1/12, my work files from 2019 to present day were gone.  I've looked everywhere on my PC, icloud, onedrive, etc.  Then I looked on reddit for advice and was reading about a glitch in dropbox.  There were multiple postings stating that if you remove an external hardrive, it can delete a lot of files on dropbox if it's in the middle of an update.  

There are no events or deleted files.  My last chance would be if dropbox actually has a backup of records and can go back to the files I had there on 12/30.  Can you do that?

Hey Help2025, thanks for your post. 

How did you upload your files exactly to Dropbox from your external hard drive? Can you walk me through the exact steps that you took and the Dropbox platform you used (website/desktop app)? 

Also, before disconnecting your drive, did you make sure that all of the photos had been fully uploaded to Dropbox? 

Besides the Deleted files page, have you also checked your Events page?

Let me know more details and we’ll go from there.