Tell HN: Google Drive for Mac deleted all my files

[supportengineer]

I installed Google Drive today for Mac, first time in many years. I have thousands of files in Google Drive which I usually access via the browser only. Immediately after I started syncing it started putting ALL of the Google Drive files into the (cloud) Trash. I stopped it immediately and reverted the files. It did not download a single file to my Mac. Can anyone explain what the logic is here?

[m000]

I'm suspicious about your "first time in many years". What does that mean exactly? A plausible scenario that I could come up with:

- You had installed sync before but uninstalled it.

- You started syncing again on the same location as previously.

- There was some leftover sync state after the uninstall that was not interpreted correctly by the new version of sync, or had been corrupt.

As a result, it was determined that your local files are up to date and cloud files out of sync, which triggered the mass deletion.

Bi-directional sync can be nasty...

[supportengineer → m000]

First install on this Mac.

[emmelaich]

I have had similar unhappy yet not so dramatic occurences.

1. Very early days of Google Photos I deleted a few photos hoping to free up some space. Not realising that gphoto deleted every copy everywhere.

2. Deleting passwords from Chrome before passing the machine on to another family member. It deleted every password everywhere.

Lesson: sign out from Google before doing this sort of thing. And possibly uninstall the relevant software.

[edit I have misread; did you or google move them to the trash?]

[ajb]

One theory would be that somehow it decided that the Mac was the more up to date copy. Since there were no files, it concluded they must have been deleted, and so does the same on the cloud copy. I don't know why it would decide the Mac was more up to date though.

Earlier sync tools like rsync can do the same, but only if you pass an option telling it you really want to delete files

[m000 → ajb]

AFAIK rsync has always been uni-directional, so I don't think there can be an equivalent. If you run `rsync -av --delete local://foo cloud://foo`, you are very explicit that you want files on the the cloud to be gone if they don't exist locally.

[emmelaich → ajb]

I don't think there's a concept of up-to-date. Its the same file, multiple references. Delete one ref, delete them all.

[ajb → emmelaich]

You can use it offline, so there must be a concept of up-to-date

[cddotdotslash]

I’ve had a different, but similarly strange, issue with Drive on Mac (after using it for 5+ years without issue). It suddenly started moving tons of random files from deep in my Drive folder tree at the root of my drive. So files that were fifteen levels deep, that I hadn’t touched in years, suddenly appeared at the top of my drive. The only thing I can think of is that it’s related to the incident Drive had a few months ago where they lost data - maybe they’re recovering it, but can’t recover the location and just stick it at the root of the directory.

[eldridgea]

I'm not certain but might be related to the desktop client deleting files issue they had in Dec?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/6/23991183/google-drive-los...

[nicbou]

Something like this also happened to me. I never figured out what caused it.

Now I use Syncthing. It's far more reliable.