

Help – all Dropbox files gone - nclod

i woke up this morning to find all my dropbox files gone. I went to dropbox website and my folder is empty. I am writing a PhD and my latest rewrite is in there.<p>Any idea what i can do? contacting dropbox seems impossible.<p>?????? thanks
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Samuel_Michon
“My files are missing! How do I get them back?”
<https://www.dropbox.com/help/969/en> (Dropbox Help Center)

“Q: How do I recover deleted files? A: You can recover any file deleted in the
last thirty days from the Dropbox website.”
<https://www.dropbox.com/help/296/en> (Dropbox Help Center)

Twitter: <https://twitter.com/dropbox>

Support: <https://www.dropbox.com/support/login>

Forums: <https://forums.dropbox.com/>

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gabbott
Hey nclod,

If you are still having an issue, you can email me directly at graham (at)
dropbox.com i'll do my best to help.

Graham Dropbox Support

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jstanley
Are you sure you don't have any local copies of the files? Storing your only
copy of your PhD thesis at a third-party seems quite short-sighted.

Sorry to hear about the loss. I hope you can get your files back.

EDIT: I've not used Dropbox. I gather from gokce's comment that you did have
local copies, but Dropbox deletes them when they are deleted from Dropbox.
That's unfortunate.

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memracom
The copy of the file that Dropbox stores in your local file folder is _NOT_
the same thing as a local copy. That Dropbox folder is under the control of
Dropbox, not you. If you want a local copy of documents, then put that copy in
some other folder. Yes, this means that you will have two copies of the
document on your hard disk and that may seem redundant but just think,
redundancy is the same thing as backup. So be redundant.

In fact it would not be a bad idea to keep many extra copies of an important
document like a PhD thesis as it evolves. Either install and use a revision
control system, or just save a copy every week with the date added to the
filename.

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shawabawa3
If you can't recover them from dropbox a tool like recova
(<http://www.piriform.com/recuva>) might be able to recover them from your
hard disk (when a file is deleted it isn't really erased, just a pointer gets
deleted)

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Adlai
Also, did you try checking the Events history in Dropbox? Sometimes old files
are in there.

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gokce
since dropbox files are also stored locally it is possible that the files are
still on your harddisk somewhere but unlinked. if that's the case I suggest
you turn off your computer right away and see a professional.

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Adlai
If you have some technical savvy, try <http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/>
for ext3/4 filesystems, <http://ntfsundelete.com/> for NTFS.

If you're using something other than than one of those two filesystems, you
should probably know how to handle this yourself.

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Samuel_Michon
You left out HFS+, OS X's file system.

However, Dropbox on OS X has a cache file at ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache – so if
OP uses a Mac, chances are he won't need an undelete utility.

More info: <https://www.dropbox.com/help/296/en>

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api
Never trust the cloud. Never trust local storage, either. Never trust any one
thing to keep your data safe. Keep multiple backups at multiple locations of
anything really important.

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ricardobeat
While you are at it, print all your data using Paperbak[1] and store it in
your attic. Make a few extra xerox copies and distribute to friends and
family.

[1] <http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/>

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I don't know much data OP wants to backup, but using Paperbak you can backup
250MB to 1.5GB per ream of paper. That gets out of hand real fast.

It does remind me of how PGP used to be exported out of the US, due to
government regulations: <http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/>

