OneDrive Files Disappeared

Anonymous
2018-09-07T20:00:55+00:00

A series of folders are all empty! All of the files are missing. The folders and subfolders are present, but all the files in these folders and subfolders are simply gone. What is particularly odd is that all of these folders have a Date Modified within a very tight range, between 8:59 and 9:19 AM on 8/8/2018:

Trying to recover the files in the OneDrive on-line Recycle Bin, you can see there's a gap between 7/30 and 8/9, where there are no deleted files.

These are very important client files, and we need to recover them. I can't identify anything on our end. Does Microsoft have extended deleted file support?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-09-07T23:13:10+00:00

    Hi Noel,

    If lots of your OneDrive files get deleted, overwritten, corrupted, or infected by malware, you can restore your entire OneDrive to a previous time. Files Restore helps Office 365 subscribers undo all the actions that occurred on both files and folders within the last 30 days. For your reference: Restore your OneDrive.

    However, please notice:

    1. This action restores the entire OneDrive but not only the affected folder. In case of any data loss, you need to back up other files in OneDrive to another safe location. If you still have a concern about this point, I have shared with you a private message for another suggestion. You can check there via this link.

    2. If the files had been corrupted before you moved them to OneDrive, this action can’t help you.

    Thanks,

    Neo

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-09-11T15:33:18+00:00

    Hi Noel,

    According to your reply in PM, you have already taken actions to recover your data. Can you recover your data now? Do you still need any help? It would be great if you can share with us your recent updates.

    Thanks,

    Neo

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-09-11T15:38:35+00:00

    Working on it. I'm having to dig through the recycling bin to try to find the affected files and restore them. One thing I'm discovering going through the recycle bin is that some entire project folders have been deleted as well. The deleted date in the recycling bin is actually a week later than the folder date modified, which makes no sense, but as long as I can recover the files, it doesn't matter. The restore is slow-going. It seems to take the recycle bin quite a long time to restore certain files, and I'm probably restoring some redundant or outdated files, just in case. To be continued...

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-09-15T23:11:26+00:00

    Hi Noel,

    Have you restored your data now? Do you still need any help? You are welcome to share your updates here.

    Thanks,

    Neo

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-09-17T14:39:55+00:00

    Hello Neo,

    Unfortunately, we were only able to recover top-level files. Files in subfolders cannot be found anywhere. Because of the mapped network drive setup we use, it's impossible to know who deleted those files, so we don't know if the source of the deletion was a particular user error, or if it something on MS's end.

    Luckily, these were mostly archive folders, for which we have hard-copy (yikes!) backups. Looking forward, we may consider passing all file-sharing through OneDrive, but we use the mapped network drive solution for internal (not remote) employees is a lot faster and puts less strain on the network.

    Thanks,

    Noel

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