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
    2019-10-08T20:41:41+00:00

    Major issue. I believed OneDrive to be very secure. Now I find that files are missing with no trace. No warning from Microsoft that files are corrupted. I have no way of knowing what is missing!

    I know many of the files that just disappeared. Not sure I know all of them.

    I fully rely on One Drive. Do I need to start making backups of my files stored on OneDrive?

    Charlie

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-10-08T21:37:30+00:00

    I have concluded from reading posts and my own experience that I should trust NONE of the cloud (=someone else's hard drive over which you have zero control)  based systems, but only frequent backups to a local physical storage medium kept separate from your computer(s).  Pretty sad to have to say this in (almost) 2020, but maybe systems have become too complex to be reliable?

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-10-15T23:29:48+00:00

    Same has happened to me. Luckily I'm making copies to an external drive. What I notice is that those folders that I don't use as much, those are the ones losing data, so I don't notice, until the one day I go into the folder and find like many here describe, that the folder is there but the content is gone!! I love to use OneDrive but this is becoming very concerning. What is going on?

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  4. Craig Long 18,635 Reputation points
    2019-10-16T04:04:16+00:00

    Same has happened to me. Luckily I'm making copies to an external drive. What I notice is that those folders that I don't use as much, those are the ones losing data, so I don't notice, until the one day I go into the folder and find like many here describe, that the folder is there but the content is gone!! I love to use OneDrive but this is becoming very concerning. What is going on?

    Check Windows 10 "Storage Sense" at Settings > System > Storage.  Scroll down to OneDrive and you'll see that with "Storage Sense" enabled One Drive will "Remove unused cloud-backed content" which will remove unused local files and make them online-only.  So perhaps you should turn off "Storage Sense" if enabled.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-10-16T04:55:11+00:00

    it's off. as it should be by default.  Really unfortunate that onedrive is not reliable enough to obviate local backup on a physical device based on all the other complaints I see.

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