Corrupted Memories: The Unexpected Issue
Recently, users attempting to access their cloud photo backups, especially large archives, found some files unusable. Google confirmed on its blog that users encountered a problem where downloaded compressed archive files were completely unreadable.
“We want to inform you about a problem some of you may have experienced when downloading large archives of photos and videos using the Google One Storage Manager on your computer,” Google stated. “We recently identified a bug that affected users who used the Google One Storage Manager on a computer to download their Google Photos content.”
Bigger Than a Minor Glitch
This wasn’t just a small annoyance. The issue reportedly affected many users trying to create big backup archives from Google Photos. After waiting for lengthy downloads to finish, they ended up with ZIP files that couldn’t be opened.
The root cause? A bug in the Google Photos download tool’s script. Whenever users tried to download archives larger than 4GB (about 4.3 billion bytes), the tool created ZIP files incorrectly, leaving them unusable. For anyone trying to clear out cloud space, this limitation made the task much harder, since archives had to stay below this critical size.
How Google Responded
Once Google’s development team identified the error—an issue with how the script wrote large compressed folders—they responded with two possible solutions for affected users. First, Google advised users to retry the download. With the script now fixed, new archive files should open and extract without corruption.
More notably, Google launched a new tool for those whose downloads had already failed. Instead of downloading everything again—a process that could take hours—users can upload their corrupted Google Photos ZIP archive to this tool. While Google notes it “will attempt to create a working copy” and isn't guaranteeing perfect results, this offers hope for recovering previously lost memories without repeating the entire process.
How the Tool Works and Availability
To use the tool, simply upload the corrupted ZIP file and let the program process it. According to Google, this recovery tool will remain available through June 1, 2027. After that date, Google anticipates that no users should experience the original problem, so don’t wait too long if you need to recover your files.