Following incidents at Yandex data centers in Sasovo on October 8 and Vladimir shortly after, users reported issues accessing files on Yandex Disk. The company stated that functionality was restricted to reduce server load, though analysis suggests data cluster failures.
Photos remain partially recoverable via cached versions on S3, including various quality formats like XXXL and XXL. Video recovery is more complex as servers only provide direct links to originals, which are often inaccessible or corrupted due to the cluster outages.
An independent tool has been released to facilitate local backups of photos and videos from Yandex Disk. The software uses mitmproxy to intercept browser requests and supports Windows, Linux, and macOS, with a default setting of 8 concurrent download threads.
The tool downloads photos by accessing cached versions and attempts to retrieve video files in blocks. Users are cautioned that downloaded videos may be incomplete and that using such tools may violate Yandex service terms, potentially risking account suspension.
