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Some time last night all of my Dropbox files where deleted. Thousands of them. I signed in this morning and they were all gone from my computer. I looked in the deleted items folder on dropbox and it looks like they are all there and the event happened about 4:00 AM my time. I am going through the painful process now of restoring them all but why did this happen and how do I prevent it? I need someone from Dropbox to contact me or I will be leaving Dropbox for a more reliable solution.
I need someone from Dropbox to contact me or I will be leaving Dropbox for a more reliable solution.
They won't. This is a user supported forum. Either way, whatever caused the deletion was on your machine/devices connected to it. Dropbox cannot delete files on its own.
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As the above guy says, there is no way this is user error.
It is, or a process on one of your devices caused it. Dropbox cannot initiate deletions on its own.
Open a ticket and request a rollback of your account.
I need someone from Dropbox to contact me or I will be leaving Dropbox for a more reliable solution.
They won't. This is a user supported forum. Either way, whatever caused the deletion was on your machine/devices connected to it. Dropbox cannot delete files on its own.
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nothing changed on my computer and it was 4:00 AM. No way I buying that something happened on my computer.
SOMETHING has happened on your account or computer. It cannot be Dropbox. Dropbox doesn't have the code to do so.
Use a network drive? An external drive? Symlinks? Junctions?
4AM is also a very round time - a backup tool? A hard drive cleaning tool?
Either way, it is SOMETHING on one of your machines thats removed or deleted the files from the Dropbox folder. Unfortunately you need to work out what that is now 😞
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it wasn't exactly 4:00 AM. Nothing else syncing and what Dropbox has is logs and can identify what happened from where. It is also very possible, very very possible, since they own the hardware and the file system that a delete could have happened that maybe didn't just impact me. I emailed their support separately. This has happened with other data storage providers.
Alex P, it just happened to me yesterday as well. I am hoping Dropbox can give some useful advice because if I hadn't been sitting at my computer when the warnings started flagging on my screen, I would have lost not just one folder's worth...but several (all shared with the same individual). The log clearly shows his machine doing it...when he wasn't even turned on, apparently.
the only response I got from Dropbox was instructions on how to restore everything. It took me several hours. it happened to me overnight so I got no warning, I just noticed the next morning when I went on my computer and everything was gone. Very frustrating. I now run a daily backup to an external harddrive...............which is unfortunate
I just had the same thing happen. Could it have been hack? That's what I am wondering. I was nowhere near my computer at the time 14,400 files were deleted at once at random in various folders. It would have been impossible for a human to delete them all at once.
Could it have been hack?
Possible. But very unlikely.
It would have been impossible for a human to delete them all at once.
The timestamps are not 100% accurate - it just shows when the index finishes recording the deletions.
However, mass deletions like this are more common with external/networked/USB type drives or symlinks etc.
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I was thinking more like a bot hack, not a human hack.
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