Xplorer2 & Dropbox - Lost Files

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xrotaryguy
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Xplorer2 & Dropbox - Lost Files

Post by xrotaryguy »

I had dropbox installed on my home, laptop, and work computers. My home and laptop computers use XP and Vista respectively. My work computer uses Win7 and xplorer2.

I changed a root directory name and all the subfolders at home and on my laptop sync'd just fine. However, xplorer2 on my work computer retained the old directory name. If I used the Windows browser at work, the update looked just fine.

After months of occasionally trying new installs of Dropbox, new installs of xplorer2, pausing, syncing, etc. I finally lost all the files in the renamed root directory; thousands of hours of work. I un-deleted the files from the Dropbox web site, but then, a week later they were gone again. This time there were no files for me to un-delete.

I had files backed up on another machine. The backup was a few months old though. My fault. At the time (August), I found news that Dropbox had been hacked, and forums related to Dropbopx were locked down. I figured that the hack caused the data loss. But it may have been a Dropbox-Xplorer2 issue. I have uninstalled Dropbox from my work computer to avoid further data loss.

Has anyone else had this problem?
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fgagnon
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Post by fgagnon »

I also have dropbox installed on multiple computers at different sites:
3 XP and 3 win7 boxes.
I have not heard of nor seen the reported issue, which I expect is totally dropbox related, and likely related to renaming what you call a root folder.
I expect that when you use windows explorer to browse the computer contents, you will find the same thing.  Dropbox doesn't know or care that you use x2 for file management, it uses the windows shell (i.e. explorer) directly.
xrotaryguy
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Post by xrotaryguy »

Thanks fgagnon

The only reason I suspected an issue with xplorer2 was that the directory name never changed with with that file browser. I really don't have any way of knowing though.

When I renamed a "root" directory, the files did not immediately disappear. It was at least a couple of weeks before the initial deletion. I was able to un-delete once (I caught the problem in less than 30 days). The files disappeared a second time shortly thereafter though. Could renaming a directory really cause that?
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fgagnon
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Post by fgagnon »

In the Dropbox Help Center pages I read
Dropbox will not sync your Dropbox folder if it has been manually renamed or moved through your operating system.
So your changing the name of the path to your dropbox folder caused dropbox to lose the folder on that system.

So, rather than changing the pathname as you did, I would  first create a new folder at the location you want and with the name you want, and then move the dropbox folder to it using the procedure described here for the XP box.    By implication of omission on that page, it may be that dropbox can track the renaming on your vista/w7 systems -- if not, try using the same procedure on them.
xrotaryguy
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Post by xrotaryguy »

Perhaps that would work well in the future. Sure.
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