One of the benefits of the cloud is constantly having an online backup of your data. However, as the saying goes, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Some Google Drive users are learning that the hard way, as a new Google Drive data loss incident has resulted in some users losing months of stored data.
The loss is pretty substantial, too, with some users reporting up to six or more months of storage now being lost. The issue has been bubbling for a few days now, with more and more users reporting the issue. One user even says they logged in to find their Google Drive looking the same way it did back in May, The Register reports.
Others have chimed in with similar experiences, too, with most claiming that there doesn’t appear to be any way to get the data back in any way. One user shared a message they supposedly received from Google Support, which says not to make any changes to the root folder and that engineers are currently investigating the Google Drive data loss.
Suffice it to say this is a huge hiccup for Google Drive users. And while I might have opened with the statement of always having backups, the cloud is kind of intended to always be there, and many people put faith in that. However, doing so can lead to unfortunate situations like this.
If you currently use Google Drive and are experiencing similar issues, I’d recommend keeping an external hard drive that you can use to store backups of all the files you keep in the cloud. Sure, it might be more expensive than just using the cloud, but if another one of these Google Drive data loss hiccups happens, you’ll be happy to have that data stored elsewhere, too.
Unfortunately, Google hasn’t shared any official statements beyond the supposed support message that the user shared, and the message did not include any timeline on when it expects to — or if it even can — recover the data.
