At first I thought I was going crazy, [but](https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/239067/downloaded-files-consistently-disappearing-from-internal-storage) [here’s](https://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s10e/1031424-music-disappears-days-weeks-after-downloading-even-if-not-downloads-folder.html) [five](https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S/Music-gone-from-internal-storage/td-p/5003190/page/3) [different](https://forums.androidcentral.com/google-pixel-6-pixel-6-pro/1037083-sound-files-disappear.html) [threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQuestions/comments/ii81op/files_are_disappearing_from_my_oneplus_nord_after/), spanning different Android forums, going back to 2020, all describing the same behavior and none of them have a resolution! It goes something like this:
* You download MP3s from OneDrive to your Android Phone, any local folder.
* You wait a while, maybe a week or so?
* The files simply disappear from your local folder – not in Trash, no notifications, just gone locally. (But they remain in OneDrive just fine)
If you look at the thread examples above, it seems to be device agnostic (eg: Samsung, Pixel, OnePlus, etc) but the common denominator seems to be OneDrive.
I thought I was losing my mind with SOME mp3s mysteriously disappearing, but not all, and reading across the different threads about missing MP3s I started to suspect OneDrive’s involvement, so I did “quick” test to try and validate if OneDrive is quietly deleting files:
* Made a new sub-folder in my ‘Music’ folder,
* Downloaded one MP3 from OneDrive App
* Downloaded one MP3 from my local NAS App
* Manually copied one MP3 over USB cable
Sure enough, about a week later, the one downloaded from OneDrive has disappeared without a trace. The parent folder has a “modified” timestamp of 00:24 in the morning, but otherwise, there’s no other clues of what happened. Not in trash. I don’t have “Clean Up Space” enabled in my OneDrive app. (I can’t embed an image directly, so [here’s a link to screenshots](https://imgur.com/a/u0eom9k)) And the other files are fine.
So what gives? Is this an Android process or a OneDrive process? How does one even get to the bottom of it? Who and how and why are files getting silently removed?
PS: Anyone know how to cross-post this to r/Microsoft maybe?
***Edit:*** *Updated the description to make it clearer that files downloaded from OneDrive disappear from your LOCAL device after a week, not disappear from OneDrive entirely. As others have pointed out, perhaps it’s some other Android app/process actually removing the file, but it’s certainly affecting files downloaded locally from OneDrive.*
**EDIT 2:** I’ve started another test with the following based on some comments here:
* Another filetype: Downloaded a ROM from OneDrive to a local ROMs folder,
* Another filetype: Downloaded a random OGG from OneDrive to local Music folder,
* Made duplicate of affected file, renamed in OneDrive, downloaded to local music folder,
* Made duplicate of affected file, removed all ID3 tags, downloaded to local music folder,
* Made duplicate of affected file, downloaded to ‘Downloads’ and moved to NON music folder,
* Re-downloaded affected file, but with “make available offline” selected before download.
Guess I’ll report back in a week. Happy Holidays everyone!