Oh My God - File Deletion

I just logged in to an old computer that hasn’t been running for a few months.

InSync said it needed an update, so I did the update, then turned sync back on.

Given the update, I have no idea whether it’s the new version of the software, or some other issue causing this problem.

But the old computer started overwriting everything in my existing Google Drive.

Files that haven’t changed in those few months seem ok, but any file that has been added since is getting deleted.

Also, any file that has moved is having the file in the new location deleted and the file in the old location uploaded.

Presumably, that means files that have changed in content but not filename are also being overwritten, though I haven’t had a chance to check that yet.

Some files have been put in the insync-trash on another computer of mine, so I’m hoping to be able to restore from there, but not clear if they’re all there (or what to do about files that have been overwritten).

In addition, any Google Docs have been put in the Google Drive trash, which is dreadful, as it’s only sorted by creation date, not deleted date, so almost impossible to find files in.

And, even worse, any file that was owned by someone else, when it was deleted has had my permission to view it removed, and I’ll have to manually request permission to see all those documents again.

Luckily I spotted that this was happening part way through the sync, rather than all the way through the sync, but I’m still looking at thousands of files that have been messed up (rather than hundreds of thousands).

Short of going through each file one by one and checking manually, what on earth can I do?

NB I have a backup of the new computer, but it’s possible that there are files on the old computer that didn’t upload before it was shut down, so I’d have to manually check that file by file too.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD AN OLDER SET OF FILES OVERWRITE A NEW ONE? THAT’S INSANE!

2 Likes

@peteremcc At the outset we apologise for the inconvenience that you had to face.

We would like to know more information about your setup. What Insync version were you using on the old computer and to what version did you upgrade it to? Did you simply upgrade or did you remove/add account again?

Could you send across the following files and folders to support@insynchq.com from your old computer’s Insync app folder ("%appdata%\Insync" if you’re on Windows, “~/Library/Application Support/Insync” if on Mac and “~/.config/Insync” if on Linux): logs.db and out.txt files, “data”, “live” and “dbs” folders.

Thanks

This is one reason I have been suggesting a one way sync as an option. From Gdrive down or the reverse, depending on how a user operates. This would be a safe way to start as a user would know which way is important to them.

An even better option is an “analyze” function like Goodsync uses, which allows you to see what actions will happen before you start the sync.

Currently I can’t trust Insync not to do unexpected deletions etc.

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every decent sync software as a dry-run mode option… i gave up on insync to risky lately… to bad…

taken from rsync conmand for example:

 --dry-run  perform a trial run with no changes made

should be pretty easy to add for a decent developer

3 Likes

Was there any outcome on this issue? It is generally concerning to read of data loss. I think it would be good to update the community. thanks!