Dropbox GRRRRRRRRRRR

Zascar

A while ago my hard drive died, stopped responding and because of that Dropbox thought I had deleted all the files so it deleted them all from my dropbox account. Very annoying. I searched the help files and you can get back old files, but you can only do it on file at a time. No use when you have thousands of photos on there. I managed to get them back off the old hard drive - and put them back so it was ok. However, now I have another problem.

I opened up an old laptop the other day that I rarely use. It asked me to resync my dropbox as the password had changed. So I did. Now I log into my main PC and half the stuff is gone. Probably because the old laptop only had some of the files from months ago when it was last synced. So annoying!

Has this happened to anyone and do you know an easy way to fix it?

Thanks

Allyall

Unfortunately i'm not here to offer much help, just commenting.
I didn't realise it would delete your files if a PC failed, that's fairly scary..

Here's a dropbox Help Centre page relating to that problem.
https://www.dropbox.com/help/969/en - hopefully it will help.

I use Wuala, but sometimes (For more important files), i will also put them in Dropbox and Google Drive, as an extra precaution.

Years ago i hollowed out a Gmail account and stored some files there thinking it was great, then Google put a stop to that and i lost them all.. Needless to say that is why i 'double' backup some files.
They have since allowed an app called Gmail drive to something similar, but i haven't tried it since.

From the link above:

That said, here are other reasons that files are removed from a computer which can affect Dropbox:

Hard disk problems, including bad disks, or disks that are not ready when the Dropbox program runs. If Dropbox doesn't see known files when it starts it will assume you removed them while Dropbox was not running.

Anti-virus software that "quarantines" files. AV programs can remove or block access to files.

“Disc scanning” software (e.g. backup software) that locks-out Dropbox and makes it appear as if files are missing.

Programs that run which modify files in your Home folder, which usually includes the Dropbox folder. Some audio and image management software programs do this.

Multiple linked computers with the same name. Perhaps you gave your PC to your mom and she deleted some files. If this PC has the same name as your new computer you might not realize a second PC is in the picture. Yes, this has happened. If the computer is your then you can see the last used IP address for any linked computer on the security page.

Overheal

odd, I wiped my machine this week and the dropbox on other machines is fine about it.

maybe its possible the manner in which your drive was failing caused the active program to be unable to read the folder, forcing its exception handler to the conclusion the folder was empty.

If nothing else, I'd mention it to the people at dropbox so they can help suggest a root cause and just maybe retrieve a secondary backup of your cloud-stored files.