Google releases fix for missing Drive for desktop files

Google has released an updated version of the Google Drive app for Windows and macOS that, along with some simple manual work, should resolve missing file issues. A help page was published by Google yesterday that includes steps to resolve issues with missing files for "the small subset" of Drive for desktop users it said were …

[Tron]

Trust the Cloud, they said.

A .0 release is always bad news. Clearly a .0.0.0 release is worse. One can only assume that versions 1 to 83 were OK, but that the Team Leader for v.84 is now @NaughtyStep.

'Don't mess with things until we figure this out' is sound advice. It is pretty much the thing the resident geek tells family members when they report a problem to them and request it be fixed.

[David 132]

Re: Trust the Cloud, they said.

>'Don't mess with things until we figure this out' is sound advice. It is pretty much the thing the resident geek tells family members when they report a problem to them and request it be fixed.

Often heard subsequently in my family, variants on: "But I did what you said and didn't mess with it! After we spoke I just followed this one YouTube video that had lots of views, and it didn't work, and now I don't get Windows on my screen, just some message about 'boot sector not found'..."

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Trust the Cloud, they said.

"The Cloud" (these days) is "someone else's hardware." It is also "someone else's software.

[sarusa]

Well golly

Well golly, that only took them, what, 3 weeks (it got reported 2 weeks ago, but started before) after people's precious files started just disappearing?

Of course those people are also to blame for trusting the cloud (you had NO backups?), and especially trusting Google, but there was obviously no urgency on this from Google's PoV. Especially given that people had already figured out how to recover from this (manually) at least two weeks ago. Of course I get that a proper release of the client takes time (or should), but how about just a standalone recovery tool in a day or two? But I guess Google never works that hard.

[Yorick Hunt]

Re: Well golly

How about just a roll-back? Something that doesn't seem to be in the vocabulary of today's kid programmers, it would seem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well golly

S’Agile innit.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Well golly

but how about just a standalone recovery tool in a day or two? But I guess Google never works that hard.

You seem to be expecting error-free software [a recovery tool] on-demand. Pick any two: cheap, fast [created and released quickly], good [error-free].

Pressure does not make programmers think faster or smarter.

[sarusa]

Re: Well golly

Sorry to follow up my own comment here, but I've been talking to people who lost some data and the data is still gone.

Google LOST the data on their servers, and the 'fix' is trying to recover it from its offline backups on your machine. Obviously that has mixed success, especially 3 weeks after the problem happened.

[ecofeco]

Meant to comment on earlier article

Google has been losing data for years. I learned this the hard way about 10 years ago.

[Alumoi]

Re: Meant to comment on earlier article

Unfortunately, they are loosing YOUR data, not the data they have ABOUT you.

[TReko]

Nothing to see here

Google has locked the issue thread on the Drive Community Forums.

They did this before it was clear the problem is solved. It's also marking any additional threads as "duplicates" and locking them. Taking away the space to diagnose the issue and communicate fixes adds to the sense that Google is more interested in PR damage control than helping users