Recover deleted files on cloud “cloud”

In addition to allowing file access from all smart devices, cloud storage applications can also “save” you in a bad scenario: deleting the wrong file.

Surely, you have at least once panicked when mistakenly deleting an important document file. While free recovery tools (like Recuva) can help you get your lost files back, in some unfortunate cases, your deleted files have been overwritten on your hard drive and… forever departure.

Luckily, you can rely on cloud storage services to get your deleted files back. Let’s take a look at how to recover deleted files on the 3 most popular cloud storage services today: Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox.

Google Drive

On Google Drive, all your deleted files are saved to the “Trash” folder. You can click on the “Trash” item on the left menu bar of the web interface to find the lost files:

Next, you select one or more files (by holding Ctrl and clicking on the files you want to recover). When you right-click on your selection, you will be given 2 options: Restore or Permanently Delete the file.

You can also select these 2 actions from the upper right corner of the screen instead of through the right-click menu.

Unlike other services, Google Drive will store files that have not been completely deleted. Therefore, if your recycle bin takes up too much memory, you will have to delete files that do not need to be recovered.

OneDrive

OneDrive will also save all your deleted files to OneDrive’s “Recycle Bin” folder (independent from the recycle bin on Windows). You can access the OneDrive Recycle Bin via the menu on the left side of the web interface:

Unlike Google Drive, OneDrive gives you the option to Restore all files in addition to the normal option to empty the recycle bin. You can also rearrange the files in the Recycle Bin in the order of Original Location (before deletion) or Deleted Date to find the files to be recovered more easily:

You can also select the files you want to recover through the tick boxes on the left. After you have made your selection, you can recover the file via the button at the top of the screen, or through the right-click menu:

On OneDrive, files will be stored for 30 days in the recycle bin from the time of deletion.

Dropbox

Dropbox currently does not support the Vietnamese interface. This storage service does not have a recycle bin like Google Drive or OneDrive. Instead, deleted files will still be stored in the original directory. To recover these files, simply go to your Dropbox folder and click on the trash can icon (“Show deleted files”).

Or, you can also right-click on an empty space and click on the “Show deleted files” option. After this step, the deleted files will be displayed again in the file list and will be grayed out to distinguish them from the undeleted files.

To restore these files, you can right-click on the file and click “Restore…” (“Restore”). If this file has been modified multiple times, you can click “Previous versions” to see older versions of the file.

After clicking “Restore”, Dropbox will display a message asking for confirmation. You can also restore old versions via the “View other versions” link.

Dropbox will save your deleted files for 30 days. Users who purchase the paid Dropbox Pro plan will get to save old files for up to 1 year.

In addition to file backup, some cloud storage services will also allow you to find old versions of a file stored in your personal folder. Nearly all complete cloud storage services save the user’s deleted files in a junk folder and allow recovery. In the framework of the article, we cannot provide detailed instructions for services other than Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox, but you can completely find instructions for recovering files from these services through Google.