Google drive & gmail nightmares

Wander1

Hi. I had a gmail account for years, and used my google drive without any issues. As it was so good, I used it for uploading lots of scans of 19th century letters and transcriptions, of huge sentimental and genealogical value to our family.  Then one day something happened to my gmail, and I could not access it at all. I only had one security extra email address, but the google system declined to remember that too. I lost all the google drive material,including the transcriptions - representing hours of work that will cost a lot to replace.

I have several times since tried to set up a new gmail account. It sets up fine, but when I want to go back into it, again the password is not recognised and the system will not allow recovery even though I do have security recovery info. This happens each time I set up a new account.

Google mail and drive seem to me to be inherently untrustworthy!!  What could be going wrong?

km1500

I cannot help you regarding your Gmail and Google drive problem but what I can say is that you should never leave everything in one place and you should have alternative backups - for example on hard drives or another cloud provider

anyone else reading this thread in the future do not leave all your stuff in one place.

that said I cannot believe it is that difficult to get access to your google account. something that does not just 'happen' to Google accounts and Google does not conveniently 'declines to remember' recovery emails.

Ayr_Rage

I have found GMAIL and DRIVE to be exceptionally reliable over many years.

You should check your device for security issues and attempt to access your accounts from a completely different device and IP address.

As above, leaving the only copies of important documents on a cloud service is quite frankly madness especially as USB sticks and other external backup options are relatively inexpensive.

Neil_Jones

Wander1 said:

Hi. I had a gmail account for years, and used my google drive without any issues. As it was so good, I used it for uploading lots of scans of 19th century letters and transcriptions, of huge sentimental and genealogical value to our family.  Then one day something happened to my gmail, and I could not access it at all. I only had one security extra email address, but the google system declined to remember that too. I lost all the google drive material,including the transcriptions - representing hours of work that will cost a lot to replace.

I have several times since tried to set up a new gmail account. It sets up fine, but when I want to go back into it, again the password is not recognised and the system will not allow recovery even though I do have security recovery info. This happens each time I set up a new account.

Google mail and drive seem to me to be inherently untrustworthy!!  What could be going wrong?

Perhaps you shouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket and you should have had more than one copy of this stuff.

As to the Gmail account setup...  well nobody else has a problem so...