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Lost my files when cancelling a trial with Dropbox Backup active

DROPBOX Backup deleted my files when I cancelled my 3TB trial. Has anyone here experienced the same thing? Here's how it happened. I was on the free version and upgraded to a 3 TB trial version. Dropbox backed up all my MP3's and Audacity projects. there were many. I watched the app work syncing my files and looked around at the features for about a month but decided to cancel. In the meantime, apparently, I was at my 3TB limit, or close to it when I ended my trial. After I saw the app do quite a bit of syncing after cancelling, I was delivered back a laptop that had nothing in the 'PC' folder!! I had a large amount of Audacity projects there as well as an amount of MP3's I had exported from Audacity, as I said. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN, RIGHT?? Bad, bad, bad for your potential customers!!!!!!!!!!! I'm wondering if Dropbox still has my files and if I can get them restored to me.

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Jay

Hi @STUOS, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Have you tried checking the events page or the deleted files page on the Dropbox site to recover the missing files?

Did you cancel the Dropbox Backup prior to cancelling the trial or make any other changes on your machine?

This will help me to assist further.

All comments

Jay

Hi @STUOS, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Have you tried checking the events page or the deleted files page on the Dropbox site to recover the missing files?

Did you cancel the Dropbox Backup prior to cancelling the trial or make any other changes on your machine?

This will help me to assist further.

STUOS

THANKS Jay!!!!!!

I was able to find the date the files were deleted using the events page (9/1), but the COOL thing was that I was not TOO LATE to restore my files from the Deleted Files page! Dropbox keeps them for a month. I started the download and it looks like my files are being restored NOW, as I see the spinning square "Restoring files" go round and round on my laptop. This could take a while to finish up tonight, but before I started the restore, I attached a wired ethernet cable instead of using wireless, so that should help keep the connection up while it downloads all my Audacity content. THANKS AGAIN JAY.

YOU ROCK.

Stu Osborn, Newport, OR

STUOS

To answer your questions Jay, I don't remember cancelling the Dropbox Backup before I cancelled my trial. I believe it was still syncing when I cancelled. And I probably made some changes on my machine since, but not many. I may have deleted a few files but nothing important.

UPDATE: Jay, now that I recall, and I can see it in the events page, after this all happened I actually DID delete all but one of my Audacity eNNNNN.au files which were used to launch my Audacity projects before all this happened. I was disgusted and perplexed and decided to just start over. But then I saw the Dropbox Community and wondered if Dropbox still had my files, so I did the original post which you answered, thanks.

STUOS

Jay, QUESTION: Before I started my restoration this evening, I had paused my Dropbox syncing a few days ago. Should that have been unpaused while my files were restoring? Should I unpause syncing while the restoration is happening, or should I just leave it alone?

STUOS

Dropbox SUPPORT,

The attempt to restore my Audacity files and Desktop WAS UNSUCCESSFUL overnight. Nothing was changed on my machine when I checked it this morning. The square "Restoring Files" spinner just sat there and spun with nothing changed on my laptop.

May I please get a Support ticket on this issue, Jay? I'm needing some more help today. I'll resume syncing in my Dropbox and try to restore all my files again this morning.

Stu Osborn, Newport, OR

STUOS

Still struggling with this, Jay. But I've been able to launch the restoration on a piecemeal basis and the web page now says restorations all were successful, but the Dropbox app is reporting I'm at my 2 GB limit for the Basic Plan and will not sync any more. The sync apparently needs to happen to restore my machine but won't until this syncing issue is solved. So I deleted most of my content on Dropbox to free up space but it won't clear the "Can't sync until you free up space" error message in the app and won't bring down my files to my machine from the app.

What should I do????

Hannah

Sorry to jump in here, @STUOS, and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

If you'd like to free up some space in your Dropbox, one thing you could do, is move any synced files (ones with green check marks) out of your Dropbox folder, to a different location.

Another thing you could do to retrieve your files from our website, is to gradually download them to your computer.

STUOS

You're very kind to try to jump in and help, Hannah.

I knew I could try to restore my folders on a piecemeal basis, and I did do that actually. I separated my music files and did that restoration, then did the larger DVD data files separately. The issue I had was the Dropbox app that is required to download my restoration. It kept hanging or crashing. I knew that could be an issue with any app that requires constant connectivity, so before I started restoring I shut down wireless and connected a wired ethernet cable. Still hung at times, so it wasn't the connection.. I had to babysit the thing and choose a file to restore next which kicked things off again. It took so long I had to leave it running when I went on vacation out of town for 4 days and when I came back today, the machine was sleeping after I had turned off its power down and disabled its hibernate options before I left. When I woke it up, it appeared the app had finished downloading!! YAY!!!

What do I do now, Hannah and/or DROPBOX Community?? Nothing appears to have changed on my Desktop after having apparently been able to successfully download all my files????

Jay

Just for clarification, have the files now been restored on your account, and are they visible on the site, but not your machine?

STUOS

Jay,
Apparently SOME of the files and directories that Dropbox backed up are now on my account, but I can't download the bigger files or directories, just single files. I keep getting "NETWORK ERROR" when I attempt to download the most important directories or files, so I'm left with trying to download the data, file by file, directory by directory on a piecemeal basis and knitting the directories together myself on my machine.. Also, LAST NIGHT I see that the Dropbox app I left running is synching again after it stopped while I was away on vacation for 3 days. It is still synching the larger directories. So apparently synching wasn't finished after all!!! I thought synching had completed before I left but it hadn't so now I'm seeing various orphan data sprayed on my account that isn't in the proper directories yet. I'm lost as to where they go in the directory structure!! I tried downloading a few of the most important files from my account last night but the app ALWAYS errors, saying "NETWORK ERROR" and quits.

Jay

Since you're getting network errors, do you have any proxy, VPN, firewall, security software, or even ISP/router settings that could be restricting traffic to the following Dropbox domains?

If you're downloading them directly from the site, could you try switching browsers to see if this helps?

STUOS

Hi Jay, the Dropbox app started syncing again as I posted, so when it gets done... it's been running for more than a week now.. I'll consider going to Google Chrome in an attempt to download my content but MS Edge should be fine for the Dropbox website. There is the Microsoft Windows Firewall running with MS Security Essentials software watching for viruses, but no VPN enabled here at home. The ISP router which enables my net connection is vanilla - with no security built-in.

Update: I checked the Windows Firewall rules and Dropbox.exe is allowed Inbound for "All" connections. No Outbound rules are configured for Dropbox.

Megan

Hi @STUOS, you mentioned the app is syncing again. Could you send me a screenshot of the app's current syncing status and/or any network error message that you're seeing on your end?

Thanks!

STUOS

Megan, thanks for responding, but to clarify for you..

I only get the Network error when I attempt to download my content from the Dropbox website, and I'm not doing that presently - I'm just trying to let Sync finish using the Dropbox app. It hangs after syncing for a while.. For 4 weeks or more now it's been acting this way. I had to go on vacation for a week with the computer set up not to hibernate or sleep while the app tried to run and sync. I thought it was completed syncing when I got back from vacation for three days and three nights, but it had apparently crashed while I was gone. So I started "babysitting" the app again after logging in again, doing workarounds to keep it running and that's where I'm at now. The workarounds I've been using for the Dropbox app are to pause Sync - then restart it, or to highlight content that is "Waiting to sync", and tell the app to "Sync Next". Then it seems to wake up and begin syncing again. Another workaround I've been using to wake it up and make it begin syncing again is to close the app and re-launch it and I had to obviously do that when it crashed..

STUOS

OK, Dropbox Sync seemed to finish properly this time after 6 weeks.. and having inspected the content that is now on Dropbox and comparing it to what I remember having on my laptop.. Looks like everything is there!! But I had to go back on my laptop today and find where Dropbox partially downloaded content in the wrong place when downloading failed before, find out where it should be and make sure those files were re-downloaded in the right folder structure. There were 5 files that were in the wrong location locally according to the Dropbox location.

NEW ISSUE: Only smaller directories can be DOWNLOADED from the Dropbox website. I get "Network Error" on directories so far, bigger than 333-MB. The smaller directories 34-MB, 36-MB, etc.. download fine and I can unzip them into the proper directories, but doing it this way is a headache.

SO NOW.. HOW DO I DOWNLOAD the larger directories without a Network issue happening? VPN is not enabled and I'm using an updated MS Edge browser. Windows Firewall is running but Dropbox.exe is not blocked. I should try Chrome, according to Jay.

Nancy

Hey @STUOS!

In general, there’s a 20GB limit when downloading files from the Dropbox website, so you shouldn’t have an issue with downloads that are smaller than that.

Please go ahead and try Chrome too, and let me know if the same error persists.

STUOS

Hi Nancy,
Thanks for jumping in. Dropbox Sync seemed to finish properly on MS Edge, so I am assuming that using Chrome would have required THE SAME cajoling like the Microsoft browser did, but you never know. Bottom line is all my "stuff" seems to be on Dropbox now after letting the Dropbox app run FOR 6 WEEKS, closing or pausing and kicking it off again or unpausing it again. Another thing I've never mentioned, I had to bump up my Dropbox account to 3TB and delete content on Dropbox also in an effort to STOP the annoying YOU'RE OUT OF DISK SPACE messages and which was also apparently a blocking issue for Dropbox Sync to work at all. So I was compelled to UPGRADE to a 3 TB account to clear the blocking issue and stop the bot messages.

As far as the large file downloading limit of 20-GB, NO I DIDN'T SEE THAT using the app. More like 300-MB limit per file or directory being attempted before the download stream slowed down and stopped, then eventually popped the "Network Issue" error in the app. But HEY!! I still needed to bring down the large directories from Dropbox to my laptop if my goal was to completely reverse this stupid mistake that ate my files; and I DID THIS by abandoning the untrustworthy app and making use of the Dropbox Explorer (not the Website) to QUICKLY copy the rest of my large files locally. No one told me I could do that!! But it was quick! (And using the Dropbox website, I also just restored the content I had to delete to stop the YOU'RE OUT OF DISK SPACE messages. I thought that one through on my own.)

Done deal, dudes and dudettes!! Thanks for all the help. Now that all the hard work is over, I can delete my Dropbox account and stop using Dropbox Backup properly without Dropbox keeping all my content. Uh, how do I do THAT????

Hannah

I'm glad you were able to retrieve all your files, @STUOS, and that this situation is resolved for you.

Rest assured that all your comments are also passed along to our team.

Now, there are a couple of things to check, before deleting your Dropbox account.

The backup feature needs to be disabled, if you haven't done that already. You can follow the steps here, to do it.

After this, you'll need to disconnect any computers you might have linked to your account.

To do that, you can either sign out of the desktop application on those computers, or just delete them from the devices section in the security tab of your account settings.

I hope this helps.

STUOS

Hannah, it's been a NIGHTMARE for almost 2 months and I'm only still working on it because after mis-reading your post, I mistakenly clicked "Setup" instead of just leaving the applet unclicked. Huge mistake. I missed your instruction to leave that alone. So Dropbox started synching across again by mistake, and before I could stop it, the flaky app had uploaded and marked almost 15 GB of data AGAIN, so here I am again.. waiting for the terrible Dropbox app to finishing syncing on my laptop AGAIN!! It says it will take 15 hours, but it stops synching all the time. I'm removing my most important computer on the security tab from the list of Dropbox supported machines and as soon as I get get my data to fully sync again, I will leave DROPBOX and all it's "features" in my rear view window.