Update 2: After excruciating 20 hours or so I finally managed to download all my photos. I cancelled my subscription, shut down my account and wish you guys all the best!
Update: I assume Safari puts tabs in sleep mode after it doesn’t detect activity. As long as I keep my screen unlocked and use Firefox, I can download files. Although, they’re very slow since there is not an actual export option. In my opinion, Drive needs a lot of work and Proton needs to make it easier to export out of all their apps!
Sorry, I have to vent right now. I am really sad that I will probably lose my pictures of 2024. I have a Proton Drive subscription, but it’s been giving me a lot synchronization problems. I won’t go into detail on them, because I have already spent so much time with Support to find a solution. There just isn’t any and it’s unclear they will ever fix it.
So I decided to cancel my subscription on Proton Drive at least. Turns out it is practically impossible to download my media from Proton Drive. This is my sixth attempt downloading media and it keeps getting canceled close to the end. There is no other export option than to manually select media, download them through the browser and pray that it will finish.
I tried with 500 items, as support recommended me. It didn’t work. So I worked my way down to 400, now to 300 and it keeps failing. I don’t know how to get my pictures away from this terrible Drive app. It’s not doable to work in very small batches. I don’t have this time on hand and Proton can’t offer any solution either. I cannot even downgrade my subscription if it’s using up more than the 15GB storage that they offer.
After I find a way to export all my media, I will close down my Proton account. This is not the way of doing business. In the best I managed to easily download all my media from Google Photos and iCloud. I regret leaving iCloud and at this point, just invest the money in self-hosting solution.
Never Proton Again
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Proton’s customer support is horrendous. It just couldn’t be more clear that they’re hiring a bunch of idiots to read your emails, ignore what you’re saying, and reply with some sort of canned response. They don’t have any capacity beyond that. But that’s unfortunately just PAR for the course these days.
If all else fails, try making a GDPR download request. They must legally provide you with a copy of all data they have about you, including your uploaded photos.
Just a question: cannot this be a problem on your side of the connection ?
I recently had a problem with win11 (connected via Android with hotspot) where I was able navigate the web all I want but if I tried to download something big (let’s say a couple of GB) the connection was reset after a while. In my case the solution was to use another android phone as hotspot, but I would try to investigate if you are able to download something big from somewhere else, if not I would think the problem is your connection
I think I kind of located the problem. The reason it kept failing on Safari was probably an Apple thing (I am even so more done with Apple than anything else). I assume Safari kept sleeping the tabs because it assumed no activity. It didn’t keep them open in memory. Therefore all downloads failed. I am now doing the last part, which is 60GB of photo’s of my Asia travel. I forgot to look at my Mac, it locked itself and after 30GB the download failed again (in Firefox). I assume Firefox doesn’t reload tabs automatically so the larger files keep going.
However, I still think Proton should make it easier for us to export media. This seems no different than the walled Apple garden. Once you go in, you can get out very difficult.
However, I still think Proton should make it easier for us to export media. This seems no different than the walled Apple garden. Once you go in, you can get out very difficult.
You could be right, but exporting the data is a simple download. Maybe a button “Download all my files” could be usefull.
Exactly! The support team did acknowledge that there are known issues if you download 500 items at once. I had these issues even at 300 files. Only with batches of 100 it worked well. They really need to figure this out. Proton Drive is their worst product.
If you are right and the connection is closed by your browser because OS put it in backgroud (or suspend it) I think that Proton, or anyone else, can do little to nothing on their side.
I do like the VPN, but the drive and the email turned out to be untenable for me.
The upload/download options are just too limited and often require weird workarounds. The pricing and constant upselling, along with the opaque process for downgrading are all a little off-putting. It’s no different from what other companies do, but I guess that’s the point.
Come on, now! They are too busy with their crypto wallet and their ghetto LLM (that is not actually private).
I have never been so disappointed in a company. I’m going to close this account after I’m done downloading and I’ll transfer my email to Tuta.
I found during mass uploads there was a limit to file handlers ( I was uploading decades of photos ). I don’t know if it was proton or the browser that just couldn’t handle the amount of files, so I had to break it up into sections and upload X folders the Y folders etc, maybe downloading has the same issues
Based on your post I tried with 3 different browsers, on a wired and wireless connection (I have great internet speeds). But it’s all the same result. I assume it’s a Proton limitation.
Thanks for the follow up, this saves me(and others) a lot of effort of testing, should we need to pull down the data one day.
Linux Drive app ;_;;
FWIW, I’ve been pretty happy with Filen after I got sick of waiting for a Linux client for Drive.
I’ll check it out! It seems nice. Self hosting is kind of difficult for me, as I am not that into IT anymore. It might be a nice solution.
