Hoping for some help. I installed NextCloud sync on my NAS this weekend and it worked properly, Desktop sync was set up with no issues, but I realized the primary data source ended up being on my boot drive. I uninstalled NextCloud per the guidance in the documentation, reinstalled it, and set the datadir appropriately; I went to set up the Desktop Sync again and discovered that it had been on and wiped out 20+ years of my data in my Documents folder. It had checked the new installation, saw it was blank, and annihilated my entire folder tree instead of instead syncing my actual data to the server. I used ext4magic and various other recovery software, but the data looks like it is permanently gone.
Why would NextCloud not give a warning that this was happening?
Where would it delete the files in a case like this where there was SO many of them? Why is there no recycle bin that I can see or a backup hidden folder that would have retained this information?
Hello @GoldenQuetzal, welcome to the Nextcloud community!
I’m sorry you hit such a problem and feel embraced. First of all please understand that your system worked exactly as expected - if the client connects to server without data how it should know you want to keep the data on the client? further discussions you can find in HELP! Nextcloud nuked my files - please read and understand before you reply. and I think the best solution is to restore your backup.
Hi wwe, thanks for the response. I think by default the client should not just assume that I want to wipe out that much data; it would seem natural to me to have a prompt that says “are you sure?” for a threshold of data versus just wiping out 53 GB in one go without checking first. I restored the latest backup I had, but I lost all of 2025 as NextCloud was supposed to be my new backup solution. Edit to add: the other issue is that the trash can for deleted files on Desktop Sync is not enabled by default. It is disabled by default. This to me seems like a massive oversight.
Nextcloud is a file sync not a backup (and newer will be). other way round - once the files exist on the server - the server would have put deleted files into server trashbin. this could be the reason why he client directly deletes files - if you sync multiple clients and each client would utilize local trashbin you would consume space everywhere (without any ability to easily free this space).
I’m really sorry about this but seems your backup strategy doesn’t fit your expectations and you must review the tooling and frequency.
The prompt and enabling the trashbin by default would be very easy ways to prevent this from happening to future people, since a search of this forum and elsewhere online shows this is a common issue. It is absurd that such an easy solution would be so overlooked.
I’m aware NextCloud is not a full backup solution. I didn’t see the need to type out in full my backups, but I follow a 3-2-1 and part of that is syncing a backup to NextCloud in addition to Proton, an external drive mounted to OpenMediaVault, and hard copies on additional drives. What is crazy to me is that it wiped out everything because it doesn’t have the simple fail-safes in place that clearly other people could have used as well.
Anyone self implementing NextCloud clearly has a level of technical acumen that means we know what we are doing; to have this happen to multiple people and have such an easy solution ignored seems backward. Edit to add: enabling the trash can at minimum is probably changing a true/false flag in the background. A check for data threshold might be a bit more involved, but the trash can alone is almost a zero effort implementation that would help people.
