How to Clean Google Drive from Ransomware’s

If you want to store your data in cloud storage, Google Drive is great solution for you. It is developed by Google and offers you 15 GB of free cloud storage. All you need is to create Gmail account and access your cloud storage. One of the benefits is that you can access your files all over the world, all you need is Internet access. There are two ways for accessing Google Drive, you can do it over website (https://www.google.com/drive), or you can do it using Google Drive application which you need to download and install on your Windows 10 operating system. Files stored in Google Drive folder can be infected by ransomware, which will result with infected files synced with your cloud storage.

There are different types of malware, which can damage your operating system and your data. One of them is ransomware, malware which is designed to encrypt user data and extort money from a victims, including end users or companies. When ransomware encrypt data you can not access them anymore. You need to pay money to get decrypter for encrypted data. This is really bad, and you need to do everything to minimize risk of this problem. Imagine that company stored 100 GB of data during last 10 years, and ransomware infects all files and ecrypt their data. Company business is down and they need to pay money to get decrypter for their data. During this problem, they can lost time and money, lost clients and confidential data.

When we explain basic information about Google Drive and ransomware, lets find relation between them. When you install Google Drive application, Google Drive will create Google Drive folder at default location C:\Users\AccountName\Google Drive, where AccountName is name of user profile, for example C:\Users\Appuals\Google Drive. You can change default location of Google Drive during installation process. If ransomware attack your computer and encrypt data at your hard disk, including Google Drive folder, that means that encrypted and infected data will be synced to Google Drive cloud storage. Google Drive will not detect that your files are infected or enrcypted by malware. They are providing you only cloud storage, where you can store whatever you want and need.

So what is solution? There are two solution, one is to revert files to previous state and another is to wipe all data from Google Drive.

Method 1: Revert files to previous version

If you did some changes to your files or folders, Google Drive will record them and allow you to revert your files to previous state. If you have a bunch of data, reverting of files will consume a lot of time, because you need to do reverting one by one. Please note that Google Drive keeps older version of files for 30 days.

1. Open Internet browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Edge or other)
2. Open web site google.com/drive
3. Click Go to Google Drive
4. Type your Email or phone and click Next
5. Type your password and click Next
6. Navigate to a file you wan to revert. Right click to selected file and click Manage versions…
7. New window will open with all versions of file available at your Google Drive. Click More actions and choose You need to save file to safe location, which is not infected by malware.

Method 2: Wipe your data from Google Drive

Second solution is to wipe all data from your Google Drive and upload data which are not encrypted by ransomware. That means that you need to have a backup of your data. Backup and restore strategies are important activities you need to take in you personal or business environment. A lot of companies do not care about backup, and when ransomware infects their data, it is to late for 100% successful solution for restoring data. We are recommending you to create backup and restore strategies in the beginning of your work, personal or business. You can backup your data on USB flash drive, external hard disks or NAS storage.

In next text you can read steps to wipe your data. You need to disconnect all computers from Google Drive, wipe all data from Google Drive, and then sign in and sync.

1. Open Internet browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Edge or other)
2. Open web site google.com/drive
3. Click Go to Google Drive
4. Type your Email or phone and click Next
5. Type your password and click Next
6. My Drive will open where you need to select all files by pressing CTRL + ALL
7. Right click to one of the selected file and then click Remove
8. On the left side of window click Trash
9. Above the files your will see Trash with down arrow. Right click to down arrow and then choose Empty trash
10. Click DELETE FOREVER to delete infected files from Trash. All files stored in Google Drive folder at your computer will be removed after application syncs with Google Drive cloud storage.

After you wipe infected files, you can upload files from backup which is not infected by ransowmare. Please note, before uploading data to your Google Drive folder you need to remove all malwares from your computer.