lost all data on OneDrive

Dear ZHU Mia

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Forum. Thank you for reaching out and sharing your issue.

Please understand that our forum is a public platform, and we will modify your question/context/image to cover your data in the description. Please notice to hide these personal or organization information next time you post error or some information to protect personal data.

For OneDrive for Business/Education accounts, by default, deleted files remain in the OneDrive Recycle Bin for 30 days. After this period, files are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered through standard user actions.

• If your files were deleted, overwritten, or affected by malware, and you're using a Microsoft 365 subscription, you may be able to restore your entire OneDrive to a previous point in time using the Restore your OneDrive feature. You can find detailed steps in this official Microsoft article: Restore your OneDrive
• Alternatively, if you're looking to recover specific files or folders, you can check the OneDrive Recycle Bin. Here's guidance on that: Restore deleted files or folders in OneDrive 

If your files are no longer in the OneDrive Recycle Bin, they may have exceeded the retention period. By default, deleted items stay in the Recycle Bin for 30 days, though organizations can adjust this window to anywhere between 1 and 93 days. Once the retention period ends, files are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered using standard Microsoft tools.

• As you're part of an educational institution, I recommend reaching out to your INSEAD’s IT department immediately to explore all available options, such as the Second-Stage Recycle Bin which can retain items longer than the first-stage bin.

If the files aren't found there either, your administrator can contact Microsoft Support. However, it's important to understand that Microsoft 365 support does not offer manual data recovery services. That said, support may still assist by verifying deletion timelines or confirming if any recovery options remain. If no backups exist and the retention threshold has passed, unfortunately, the data cannot be restored.

I truly appreciate your patience and hope you’ll be able to resolve this quickly.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.