Files that only ever lived “in the cloud” may not occupy full clusters on your PC. Online-only placeholders and sparse sync can mean there is little or nothing for a block-level scan to reconstruct locally.
Start with the provider’s recycle bin, version history, or device backups before you spend hours on a local Deep Scan of a sync folder. If you know the file was fully downloaded and worked offline, treat that path like any other NTFS folder and scan the correct drive letter.
Before you blame Recuva
- Confirm in Explorer whether the path shows “available offline” or a cloud-only icon.
- Pause heavy sync during recovery so the client does not rewrite the same tree mid-scan.
- Recover to a non-synced folder on another disk to avoid the client re-uploading or deduplicating your haul unexpectedly.
Mapped drives and NAS quirks: How it works: paths.