Heads-up: Takeout Transfer was broken last summer, lots of incomplete transfers

[icrew]

Hi all:

We just got the following notice from Google. Apparently Takeout Transfer was broken last summer (right during the time so many of us were trying to reduce storage), resulting in incomplete  transfers. In the case of UC Berkeley, it affected over 1000 of our users.

And all Google has to offer is "try running the transfer again." But that doesn't work, because our users who were transferring data were doing so in order to get below their new quota. Which means they will have deleted the source data from their Berkeley account after they transferred. Meaning that we now get to explain to >1000 people that their data is irrevocably lost. So fun.

Google really needs to stop this amateur-hour stuff with Takeout. It's just bad.....

See below for the complete notice we got to our primary admin account (bolding is theirs)....

Ian

Dear Google Workspace Administrator,

We're writing to let you know we identified a limited technical issue in Google Drive' Transfer Your Content functionality for copying or transferring data from student accounts. Specifically, some results generated by this tool between July 17, 2024 and September 20, 2024 may be missing files. The technical issue is now resolved but there are steps you and/or your users should take to ensure all user data is completely copied or transferred to the intended destination. 

How this was fixed

We have deployed a fix that prevents new occurrences of this issue so future operations to copy or transfer data will include all expected data.

What to do

Our records indicate that your users generated exports during the time period when the operations may have yielded incomplete results. We have attached a list of user accounts impacted by this issue. These users should re-run the copy and transfer operation to ensure that all of their data has correctly been copied or transferred to the destination account. 
You may reach out to Google Support if you have any questions or concerns.

We're here to help

We appreciate your business and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any questions, please contact Google Support and reference issue number XXXXXXX.

Sincerely, 

The Google Workspace Team

--

Ian Crew

Architect, Communication and Collaboration Services
Productivity & Collaboration Services
Berkeley IT

University of California, Berkeley

[panderson]

Didn't anyone notice that they didn't get all their files? 

[icrew]

Very probably a few of them did notice and ask us, but our response would have just been “retry the transfer.” It’s unclear to me whether the folks who retried are included on the list we got. 

[bowarmbold128]

Did this go to all admins or just a primary admin?  I didnt get one so hopefully we were not affected

[icrew]

Just to the primary admin, as far as I can tell....

[kematthews]

Thank you for raising this issue.

As the notice you received explains, we recently determined that there was an issue impacting Google Drive’s Transfer Your Content that resulted in some incomplete transfers.

Files that had non-content modifications (for example trashing files, or changing their owners), between July 3 and August 20 of 2024 are the most likely to have been omitted from results. Customers were notified once impact could be determined with high confidence.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact Google Support and reference issue number 395143008.