All files were deleted from my computer but the folders are still there

Troubleshooting
1

Hi,

I have a very strange situation. My assistant swapped the hard drives from an old pc to a new one. Suddenly, all my files just disappeared from the pc folders, but the folder structure is still there. I’m trying to find a logical reason for this, so my question is, does ODRIVE recognized the new machine as a different one, and for that reason, just deleted the files?

2

Hi @armontoya ,

Can you provide some more details on what happened here? Was this swapped on your PC or on her’s?

There are potentially a lot of things that could be going on with a hard drive swap, so we will want to drill into this a little bit more to understand the effects it may have had.

The sync activity logs may be able to provide some information, as well. You can find it from the odrive tray menu sync activity log

Can you save that file to your desktop and then attach it here so that I can take a look?

3

Those files were on her pc. But that file is gone because as soon as we noticed that the computer were not working properly, we did a clean install of windows on the machine. Do you have any other log online?

4

Hi @armontoya ,
We do not store any information about user activity on our servers, so the logs are all localized.

Once you performed the reinstall did everything go back to normal? Was all of the data still in the cloud storage?

5

No, she did renew the odrive service but did not renew the Amazon Cloud. it had to be don on September 2020. Nevertheless, everything was working fine till 3/30/21, when all the files disappeared.

The data on the cloud storage was from September 2020

6

Hi @armontoya ,
Thanks for the additional information.

I have a couple more questions, if you can answer them:

  • The files were deleted from Amazon Drive by Amazon after not renewing in September?
  • Amazon Drive was still linked to odrive?

If the answer to the above questions is ‘yes’, then it is expected that odrive would remove the local files as part of the sync process, since Amazon was no longer showing them on the remote side.

I’m not sure why the files wouldn’t have been deleted earlier on the other computer unless there was some problem that was preventing the local delete. When odrive performs a local delete due to remote delete, it will move the items into the OS trash. That means if odrive performed the deletes on the new computer, the files would’ve been moved over the Windows Recycle Bin. Did you get a chance to look there before reinstalling the computer?

7

So, what you are trying to say is, since there was no payment on Amazon CloudDrive, they could be the ones who deleted the files on the cloud, causing oDrive sync and remove them from the local pc. Is that right?

8

Hi @armontoya ,
Yes, that is correct.

You should be able to confirm this by looking at the Amazon Drive storage from their web client (https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive). Even if you stopped paying for an upgraded subscription, they provide 5GB for free, so the account should still exist and you should be able to browse the content that they still have. I believe Amazon gives you 180 days to download the data after the subscription expires and then they start automatically deleting data until it is brought back down to the free 5GB.

9

ok thanks, let me check on the Amazon Cloud drive and find out. Thank you for your help.

10

Hi @armontoya ,
No problem. I am really sorry that you encountered this scenario. I wish I could help more.

For reference, I found Amazon’s policy for data retention: File Retention Policy - Amazon Customer Service

An account that exceeds the storage quota can log in and download files, but cannot upload, sync, or share files.

After 180 days in an over-quota status, files are deleted (starting with the most recent uploads) until your account is no longer over quota. Account holders are notified prior to file deletion.