Deleted User's Data Recovery

[michaeltyrrell]

Hi All,

I recently deleted a user, my ex graphic designer who had been creating files for a few years.

I thought (appears not) that i had transferred the files ownership to myself during the delete process. 

This was before Christmas, i've now come back to work and can see her files locally on my mac but they aren't online on the Google Drive. I contacted support and there is nothing they can do as it's gone past 20 days.

The files that are local - I can't open them, move them or share a link with a right click. I'm assuming they have data still because they are not 0kb. 

Surely there must be a way to change the ownership after the user has been deleted?
If not, how do we start to ask Google for this to be a thing?

[ThatMat]

Hi,

If user was deleted then files they owned are gone so there is no need for a feature that will change ownership (that's the theory)

Push on support, it's not actually fully gone after 20 days, sometimes they can still help you.

Check logs if you started process of moving data, if you and it failed or something like that then you have better push for support.

Normally other solution would be recovering from back (obviously you would have to have it) or recovering from vault (again, you would have to have it).

Not sure if we can recommend 3rd providers here but there are some great, cheap backup options that can be deployed to most missions critical team members.

[michaeltyrrell]

Hi 

I still have the files on my mac for some reason but just can't access them.
We have just just a Synology system in for back ups but typically just too late.
Will push again and see what they can see, they did say that there would usually be a deleted user folder on their system which wasn't there so think it might be too late. 
Appreciate your help though.

[StephenHind]

@michaeltyrrell did you use the transfer ownership feature in the admin panel?  That's the only way to properly transfer ownership of Drive content.  If you did use this tool then you will see a folder in your Google Drive with the user's email address in it. If you didn't use the transfer ownership tool then these files will be gone forever.

I still have the files on my mac for some reason but just can't access them.

Do you mean you can see the shortcut files that Drive for Desktop creates?  These aren't the files but only shortcuts to them (if they're Google Docs etc).  If they are the files, not just shortcuts, what message do you get when trying to access them?  Who's the owner of the file?  is it an external account rather than one of your workspace accounts?

[michaeltyrrell]

Hi 

Yes thought i transferred them but it can't have happened and i missed an error message somewhere maybe. I added a new user and then deleted them to check the process i went through and it worked fine. I got an email confirming it too, which i didn't get the first time i deleted the user (i searched for it). 

Such a shame about the timing, without Christmas break i'd have spotted it sooner and been able to recover it. Also that our Synology backups weren't in place in time as we'd set these up over Christmas too.

Thanks everyone for the help.

How do we make feature requests on here? Or search others and vote on existing ones?

[StephenHind]

@michaeltyrrell the transfer of ownership does not automatically happen, you need to either start it manually or select to do it at the delete user dialogue - if you missed it at that point then it was never even started.

You can make feature requests in the Feature Ideas section.  Be aware however for people to have confidence in Google then "delete" has to mean exactly that: if a Google customer wants to delete something then the customer needs to know that it is in-fact deleted and Google doesn't have it secretly hidden away somewhere.

Just so you're aware your Synology backup may not be able to backup everything with 100% fidelity, e.g. Google Docs become Word Documents so some functionality will be lost in that process.  The Synology box can't backup everything either as either Google doesn't provide a way to do it or Synology has not implemented it, so you may want to look at other, cloud-to-cloud solutions that are not reliant on your internet connection, e.g. https://afi.ai.