Lost my files when cancelling a trial with Dropbox Backup active

[STUOS]

DROPBOX Backup deleted my files when I cancelled my 3TB trial. Has anyone here experienced the same thing? Here's how it happened. I was on the free version and upgraded to a 3 TB trial version. Dropbox backed up all my MP3's and Audacity projects. there were many. I watched the app work syncing my files and looked around at the features for about a month but decided to cancel. In the meantime, apparently, I was at my 3TB limit, or close to it when I ended my trial. After I saw the app do quite a bit of syncing after cancelling, I was delivered back a laptop that had nothing in the 'PC' folder!! I had a large amount of Audacity projects there as well as an amount of MP3's I had exported from Audacity, as I said. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN, RIGHT?? Bad, bad, bad for your potential customers!!!!!!!!!!! I'm wondering if Dropbox still has my files and if I can get them restored to me.

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi @STUOS, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Have you tried checking the events page or the deleted files page on the Dropbox site to recover the missing files?

Did you cancel the Dropbox Backup prior to cancelling the trial or make any other changes on your machine?

This will help me to assist further.

[STUOS]

THANKS Jay!!!!!!

I was able to find the date the files were deleted using the events page (9/1), but the COOL thing was that I was not TOO LATE to restore my files from the Deleted Files page! Dropbox keeps them for a month. I started the download and it looks like my files are being restored NOW, as I see the spinning square "Restoring files" go round and round on my laptop. This could take a while to finish up tonight, but before I started the restore, I attached a wired ethernet cable instead of using wireless, so that should help keep the connection up while it downloads all my Audacity content. THANKS AGAIN JAY.

YOU ROCK.

Stu Osborn, Newport, OR

[STUOS]

To answer your questions Jay, I don't remember cancelling the Dropbox Backup before I cancelled my trial. I believe it was still syncing when I cancelled. And I probably made some changes on my machine since, but not many. I may have deleted a few files but nothing important.

UPDATE: Jay, now that I recall, and I can see it in the events page, after this all happened I actually DID delete all but one of my Audacity eNNNNN.au files which were used to launch my Audacity projects before all this happened. I was disgusted and perplexed and decided to just start over. But then I saw the Dropbox Community and wondered if Dropbox still had my files, so I did the original post which you answered, thanks.

[STUOS]

Jay, QUESTION: Before I started my restoration this evening, I had paused my Dropbox syncing a few days ago. Should that have been unpaused while my files were restoring? Should I unpause syncing while the restoration is happening, or should I just leave it alone?

[STUOS]

Dropbox SUPPORT,

The attempt to restore my Audacity files and Desktop WAS UNSUCCESSFUL overnight. Nothing was changed on my machine when I checked it this morning. The square "Restoring Files" spinner just sat there and spun with nothing changed on my laptop.

May I please get a Support ticket on this issue, Jay? I'm needing some more help today. I'll resume syncing in my Dropbox and try to restore all my files again this morning.

Stu Osborn, Newport, OR 

[STUOS]

Still struggling with this, Jay. But I've been able to launch the restoration on a piecemeal basis and the web page now says restorations all were successful, but the Dropbox app is reporting I'm at my 2 GB limit for the Basic Plan and will not sync any more. The sync apparently needs to happen to restore my machine but won't until this syncing issue is solved. So I deleted most of my content on Dropbox to free up space but it won't clear the "Can't sync until you free up space" error message in the app and won't bring down my files to my machine from the app.

What should I do????                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

[Hannah]

Sorry to jump in here, @STUOS, and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

If you'd like to free up some space in your Dropbox, one thing you could do, is move any synced files (ones with green check marks) out of your Dropbox folder, to a different location.

Another thing you could do to retrieve your files from our website, is to gradually download them to your computer.

[STUOS]

You're very kind to try to jump in and help, Hannah.

I knew I could try to restore my folders on a piecemeal basis, and I did do that actually. I separated my music files and did that restoration, then did the larger DVD data files separately. The issue I had was the Dropbox app that is required to download my restoration. It kept hanging or crashing. I knew that could be an issue with any app that requires constant connectivity, so before I started restoring I shut down wireless and connected a wired ethernet cable. Still hung at times, so it wasn't the connection.. I had to babysit the thing and choose a file to restore next which kicked things off again. It took so long I had to leave it running when I went on vacation out of town for 4 days and when I came back today, the machine was sleeping after I had turned off its power down and disabled its hibernate options before I left. When I woke it up, it appeared the app had finished downloading!! YAY!!!

What do I do now, Hannah and/or DROPBOX Community?? Nothing appears to have changed on my Desktop after having apparently been able to successfully download all my files????

[Jay]

Just for clarification, have the files now been restored on your account, and are they visible on the site, but not your machine?