OK, so I’m working for a client on a big project. Part of the effort is to read, review and report on a collection of around 200 PDF files. Total on-disk footprint for these files is pretty big (~0.5 GB) so it’s outside the boundaries of easy transfer via email. The client uses Box.com instead, and makes a set of folders available to me through shared access to them and their contents. Two days ago, I went to start working through some of those files, only to find them MIA on my local SSD. These disappearing Box downloads cause consternation, and forced me to download them again. What’s up?

When Disappearing Box Downloads Cause Consternation Then?

When I called my client to ask for info, she explained their retention policy is to delete all box items 30 days after posting. She was as surprised as I was that my local copies had disappeared, but not at all surprised about their shared online sources. It seems that ownership of shared files can sometimes cause them to disappear from local drives when their online “parent files” do likewise.

I can see in the Box admin console that the first set of downloads (dated September 9) did indeed go though. You can see I downloaded over 250 items on that day, as I grabbed the various folders whose contents I needed to read and act upon. I also reset Ownership on those files from read-only (as defined in the Box download apparently) and gave myself full rights to the whole folder hierarchy.

I’m hoping this will be enough to prevent their online timeout from affecting their local presence on my primary data drive (a nice, big 4TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe SSD). Just to be absolutely safe, I also saved copies of the ZIP files that Box produces on a UFD which I’ll keep disconnected from the Internet. Hopefully, that will provide a failsafe backup should the new set of files somehow disappear again when yesterday’s 30-day timer runs out on October 18.

Here in Windows-World, things can — and do — get strange sometimes. I hope I’ve done due diligence to keep those files around this time. We’ll see…