New files deleted when old Dropbox drive was connected

[Asa_Barth-Maron]

I have a large amount of data (~0.75TB) synced between the Dropbox website/cloud and my desktop, including relatively recent data. I also had a much older (months out of date) version of my Dropbox folder stored on an external hard drive, which I had previously used with my laptop. I recently plugged this drive in to my laptop and Dropbox started syncing to this location for the first time in many months (perhaps over 6 months even). However I noticed that files on the Dropbox website and my desktop had files begin to be deleted. It seemed like maybe the old drive connected to my laptop was forcing it's old version to be prioritized - causing newer files to be deleted. However, strangely, at the same time the old Dropbox drive updated with new files. So the desktop and cloud lost files, but the old drive gained those same files that were lost.

As soon as I realized this was happening I disconnected from the internet and stopped syncing the old/laptop drive. It looks like most or all of the deleted files are present if I click the 'show deleted files' option in the web browser. However I'm not positive that everything is accounted for. I also wonder if this is a weird intermediate thing, and if I resume the sync everything will correct itself including the deleted files.

Ideally what I'd like to do is just roll back my entire Dropbox account so that any changes made today (6/5/22) are reverted. This seems to be an existing feature called 'rewind' but after following the instructions I cannot find the option to rewind my Dropbox on either desktop or web.

At the end of the day it seems like the files haven't been permanently deleted and should be able to be recovered, but I am a bit nervous about this because a fairly large amount of research data was deleted, and I am under a bit of a deadline that involves working with it.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Jay]

Hi @Asa_Barth-Maron, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

If you're experiencing issues using Dropbox Rewind, I'd recommend getting in contact with the support team directly for further assistance.

Once you get a ticket ID from the automated response, please let me know the number here so I can locate it in our system.