Disk errors causing Dropbox to delete files

Question

Hi community,

I recently noticed some unexpected 'deleted files' activity on my account.

Initially I assumed it was user error, that I’d mistakenly deleted these files somehow. So I restored the missing files, and based on this assumption left the matter there.

Then it happened again.

It turns out that one of the PC’s I have my Dropbox installed on has been experiencing some disk failure on a secondary internal HDD (mounted as F:\)

On this particular PC, Dropbox had been set up, with my two accounts (a Business Standard and a Personal Basic), pointing to a non-standard location for the Dropbox Folders (ie. F:\username\Dropbox (Personal)\ and F:\username\Dropbox (Business Name)\ ) – homed on this now failing second disk.

From my understanding, it appears that Dropbox has be interpreting this failing disc’s errors – low-level disc access failures -  as user level file/folder deletes.

In other words as this disc has been silently failing and effectively ‘deleting’ files, Dropbox has interpreted this as user actions and synced the corresponding deletes to the upstream repository.

As a result I have lost a lot of data. All in very random locations throughout the Dropbox file hierarchy.

I have been able to recover all the data from the linked Business account, but I did not catch the problem in time to recover all the lost data from my personal account (30 days history).

Q) Has anyone experienced anything similar? If so what did they do?

Q) Is this known and intended Dropbox behavior?  - Surely Dropbox should have some defense against this circumstance? Or have I misunderstood what Dropbox can be relied on for – ie. data backup/protection?

Q) If I upgrade my Personal Basic account to Professional, will this unlock 180 days of deleted file history, or have I permanently lost the data that I did not recover in time?

Thanks in Advance.

Ben

Bob Sacamano · Answer

I also had this happen to me recently. Seriously concerning when I though my files were made safe with Dropbox. Luckily, I caught it before the retention period expired. But if I hadn't, we could have lot invaluable data forever without even knowing about it.

This makes me seriously question whether ANY cloud sync or backup should be used. If you are using cloud you need a one-way only upload to a service that won't delete anything uploaded for any reason... work with local files only and backup to a local SSD only.

Walter · Answer

Hey @dyk1, sorry to hear about this.

Can you please take a look at your events page and let us know how exactly those deletions are logged there?

Any additional information you can share about the incident would be much appreciated.

dyk1 · Answer

Hi, I had the exactly same problem. An internal hard drive of PC, synced with dropbox, failed a couple days ago and I released that most of my dropbox contents have been erased in other PC with sync. Very scary! I think it needs to be check how this can be happening.