Unsynced files lost? NEED HELP, please!

Troubleshooting
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1

I believe I ran into the same issue as described here.

I posted my cry for help there but now I’m thinking I should have created a new issue. So here we go:
I believe I run into the same problem: I unliked my google drive (believing everything is in sync). Many of my files are gone!

  • In the trash bin I can find files like “Main_icons.sketch.cloud” which I cannot open anymore
  • some apparently broken “.cloud” files I can still see now in the odrive folder, but I can’t sync them: “This file is not inside an odrive folder”

➔ How can I convert .cloud files to proper files again? They have a file size, like 62 MB - they are not empty but just not accessible. PLEASE I NEED HELP!

This is shocking to me, how come there was no warning, how can this be happening? I need to go through hundreds of folder and find out what is missing? And for that experience I paid 99$?

2

Hi @pexider,
Thanks for reaching out about this.

odrive has several safeguards in place, which makes it very difficult to have files that are truly lost. I’ll see if we can get things sorted out here.

The most important thing to note is that your files and folders should all still be in Google Drive. When you unlink storage from odrive, it can no longer access that storage. The storage stays where it is (Google Drive, in this case), however. This means all of your files are still available in Google Drive. odrive just can’t see/access them because you’ve removed odrive’s access to the storage.

Can you send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu? (See How do I send a diagnostic? for how to do that). This will provide me with information about your environment and configuration.

A .cloud file is a representation of a file that exists in your cloud storage.

It sounds like you unlinked your Google Drive from odrive. When you do this, odrive will see that you have removed (deleted) the Google Drive link and will move the corresponding local folder to your OS Recycle Bin (in Windows) or Trash (Mac). It does this because odrive no longer has any access to that Google Drive account, so when odrive tries to list your linked storage, that account is not returned in the listing anymore (you have deleted it from your odrive account)

When unlinking your storage from odrive, the storage is unaffected. This means your Google Drive files and folders all remain as they are in the cloud. odrive just doesn’t have access to them anymore.

If you re-link your Google Drive storage, odrive will see the storage listed and it will show up on your local system again. At that point you can browse and sync it, once more.

I would need to take a look at where these are located. In general, you will see this message if you try to sync a placeholder file that corresponds to storage that odrive no longer has access to.

I will need to take a look at your diagnostic to see how things are configured, but you would need to have your Google Drive re-linked to be able to access any data that is stored in your Google Drive.

3

Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly!

Here is my diagnostic file: current_odrive_status.txt (1002.5 KB)

This means all of your files are still available in Google Drive.

I already relinked GoogleDrive after noticing the problem. Now some odrive folders on my laptop are empty. In Google Drive I can see the same folder containing a “.cloud” file which cannot be opened. See screenshot:

example
example2232×1460 344 KB

If you re-link your Google Drive storage, odrive will see the storage listed and it will show up on your local system again. At that point you can browse and sync it, once more.

I don’t understand why the odrive folder in the example above (“Malen”) is up to date, but does not include the .cloud files or the original files.

Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

4

Hi @pexider,
Thanks for getting back to me.

Having those .cloud files in Google Drive is unexpected. odrive can’t upload placeholder files, so it may be that the two files in the screenshot were copied or moved from odrive into Google Drive, directly.

Since you have both the Google Drive client and the odrive client installed, is it possible that these files were copied or moved from somewhere inside the odrive folder into the Google Drive folder?

Here are a few things we can look at:

1.
odrive keeps detailed logs of all of the actions it performs, so we can take a look at that to see what actions odrive historically took on these 2 files. To do this:

  • In Finder, at the top, Navigate to Go->Go to Folder…
    finder_go_to_folder_1

  • Then type in ~/.odrive/ and click “Go”.
    finder_go_to_folder_2

    This will open up odrive’s data folder.

  • Then zip up the log file folder by right-clicking on it and selecting “Compress log”.
    Compress_log_file_mac

    This will create a “log.zip” file. If you can send me that zip file, I should be able to get a really good view into how odrive interacted with the 2 files in your example above and help narrow down where we can look at things.

  • Click on my name above and select “Message”. That will send me a direct, private message.

  • You can then drop the zip file that was created into an odrive folder, wait for it to upload, and then right-click->“Copy Share Link to Clipboard” and paste that link into the message and send it to me.

See if there is anything unexpected in your Google Drive trash.

  • Go to https://drive.google.com to login to your Google Drive account.

  • Click on “Trash” at the left side of the screen

  • Look at the list of items contained here and see if there are any that stand out as unexpected.

  • You can also search the trash using their search bar at the top and adding is:trashed to the search string.

    For example you can type in Moodboard is:trashed

Search your Google Drive for files (https://drive.google.com).

  • Similar to #2, use Google Drive’s search bar to search for Moodboard

Look at Google’s activity history for a particular folder (https://drive.google.com).

  • In the Google Drive web client you can view the activity history for folders and files. For the example above, you can navigate into [Hobby]/👩🏻‍🎨 Malen, click on the circled “i” icon at the top right, and then click on “Activity”. In my example screenshot, I am looking at a folder named Temp

    google_activity_info
    google_activity_info334×659 16.3 KB

We can see what Google shows for the activity in this folder.

5

Thank you for your message!

number 1) done.

I found the folder in the trash including those 2 files. I restored them in Google Drive and now they synced back to odrive on my laptop! Yeah!

I will try and continue bringing all files back like this. I will get back to you how this goes.

6

Thanks for the swift response @pexider! I am going through the logs and I will respond in direct messages with what I discover.