Have loads of your Google Drive files vanished? There's a fix for that

Some of those using Google Drive's desktop app experienced a very worrying issue recently - namely a chunk of files disappearing from their cloud storage locker - but the good news is that there's now a fix.

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As flagged up by The Verge, Google outlined the steps you need to take in a support post, giving affected people (some of whom lost six months of files, or more) several options for recovering their files.

By the way, we're told that only a small number of Drive for desktop users were affected (those running version 84 of the app).

The main solution provided calls for you to download the latest version of Drive for desktop (v85.0.13.0 or better), install that, and fire it up.

Then take the following steps:

1. In the menu bar or system tray, click the Drive for desktop icon (the triangular Drive logo, in other words)
2. Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings (the cog icon)
3. Click Recover from backups

Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully you'll see a message telling you that the recovery process has started - and with any luck that'll run through to completion. Your missing files will then be back (in a Google Drive Recovery folder on the desktop).

The one snag you can hit with the recovery process is an error telling you there's not enough drive space for the files - in which case, you need to free up storage and start the recovery over.

If the recovery process doesn't start at all, and instead you get a message informing you that no backups were found, then Google suggests you contact support for further help.