Instructions to recover

My partner had the same problem. Took about 2 days but I managed to recover her stuff.

1. Uninstall Google Drive.

2. Install an old version of Google Drive (there's a version 82/83 floating around on the internet).

3. Disable the 2 Google Update services (they won't be running, but they still need to be disabled).

4. Disable the Google Update scheduled tasks (2 of them).

5. Make sure Google Drive is not running.

6. In the User Data folder, go into Google > DriveFS > the folder with a long number.

7. In that folder there's a folder called backups, which has another folder with a couple of long numbers. Move all of the files from the "Backup" folder into the main folder (from step 6).

8. Start Google Drive.

9. Go into your G Drive (or wherever it is) and copy _absolutely everything_ somewhere else outside of Google Drive.

Due to the way that Google caches stuff, what you have locally will be your latest files. The problem looks to be that things weren't being uploaded properly.

10. If you want to carry on using Google Drive (!!!), re-enable the update services and wait for Google Drive to update. It will then sign you out and reset your local state to what it had in the cloud.

11. Use a tool like robocopy to overwrite the contents of your G Drive with what you had copied elsewhere.