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Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

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Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#121

Post by ClumsyPilot »

unxdfa wrote: post #116
jefftk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for code, git being distributed means that there's always multiple copies with typical workflows. For example, in addition to the copy on GitHub whoever pushed last should have a completely current copy. And everyone else working with the repo should have something pretty current.

We have 643 git repos. I'm not sure we could reconstruct all of those by going round 300 engineers' machines...

Exactly, its a fantasy

Our company has thousands of repos, some of them years old.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#122

Post by Trasmatta »

stepri wrote: post #16

This is just a reminder to take a backup of your cloud photos and store it locally (or other cloud provider). For example, with Google Takeout you can get a ZIP file with all your photos and videos from Google Photos.

I hate how Google Photos seems to no longer have the ability to auto sync to your computer. When it was integrated more with Google Drive you could do that, and then my daily automated backups would pull them. That way I had them in Google Photos, my computer's hard drive, and my off-site backups, all automatically. Now my only option is to periodically do a manual Takeout, as far as I can tell.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#123

Post by pandemicsoul »

worldsavior wrote: post #57
stepri wrote: post #16

This is just a reminder to take a backup of your cloud photos and store it locally (or other cloud provider). For example, with Google Takeout you can get a ZIP file with all your photos and videos from Google Photos.

That makes no sense. If you have backups locally, why store them on the cloud?

The backup rule of 3?

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#124

Post by fullstop »

harry8 wrote: post #81
plagiarist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nikon RAWs are more like 50 Mb on their current cameras. Amazon offers unlimited photo storage with Prime. I agree they should also have their own physical backup if the photos are important, even at ~10x the storage requirements you estimate, but I'd also say any complaints about Amazon losing their photos are valid.

oh, ok so prime sub is about $50/yr but you get other things and it seems popular. And 15 Tb is the go. Can you encrypt them or do they require to be able to view your photos so not just bytes on disk? >any complaints about Amazon losing their photos are valid. Like crossing the road, being right doesn't help. :(

Prime is $139/yr for non-students in the USA, at least.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#125

Post by ghaff »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #109
clevedotoner wrote: post #101

One of my worries that keeps me sleeplessly awake at nights sometimes is the possibility of solar flares wiping out storage/data -- at my bank, on my hard drive and what not. A sufficiently strong solar flare can essentially put us back a few centuries electronically, and a few millenia socially, instantly. Wonder if there are stress tests on cloud storage that account for this possibility by means of adequate insula…

Isn't a lot of our critical stuff backed up to tape drives still?

"A lot"? Sure, I guess. But as someone who stores multiple copies of everything both onsite and in the "cloud," I certainly don't have local tape backup and I doubt that Backblaze does either.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#126

Post by unxdfa »

krzyk wrote: post #113
unxdfa wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Amazon retail / services support, their data is gone and they'll be lucky if they raise anyone at all. If you pay $15k a month for AWS enterprise support, you will find someone who may or may not be able to help you within 6 months after misinterpreting the problem and having to raise your account manager and wave your hands around.

I'm surprised, Amazon is well known of having the best in class customer support for their store (I mean: "Customer: My kindle broke, because I sat on it. Amazon: no worries, let me send you a replacement, no need to send back the old kindle" level of good support) - oh and human support, not google botocracy.

Have you tried getting through to a human recently on Amazon retail support? It's quite difficult. First you have to negotiate with a bot with an IQ and service level of an angry wasp, then you get filtered through to someone who usually can't help. So you have to try 2-3 times to get stuff sorted.

The whole thing is designed to put people off and make it difficult to get problems resolved.

I'm fairly good at being annoyed enough to work around this but most people out there can't handle things like that easily and Amazon knows it.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#127

Post by Nextgrid »

krzyk wrote: post #113
unxdfa wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Amazon retail / services support, their data is gone and they'll be lucky if they raise anyone at all. If you pay $15k a month for AWS enterprise support, you will find someone who may or may not be able to help you within 6 months after misinterpreting the problem and having to raise your account manager and wave your hands around.

I'm surprised, Amazon is well known of having the best in class customer support for their store (I mean: "Customer: My kindle broke, because I sat on it. Amazon: no worries, let me send you a replacement, no need to send back the old kindle" level of good support) - oh and human support, not google botocracy.

Any large-scale consumer-grade service optimizes for cheapness of support.

It's just a coincidence that when it comes to retail, the cheap option (just ship another one out) also works well for the customer. At scale, shipping duplicate items, even expensive ones still works out cheaper than well-trained, competent, well-treated and well-paid humans.

This one on the other hand requires engineering time (can't be resolved by a bot or monkey pressing a "ship another item" button) which isn't cheap and unless they have legal liability, it's cheaper to just stonewall or even ban this customer forever and lose their business.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#129

Post by PaulHoule »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #66
thrdbndndn wrote: post #46

It literally only has been 1 hour since OP posted that thread. I agree with all the points about having backups and/or using better service/self host etc., but IMO it's too early to conclude anything about this incident.

I'd be freaking the fuck out too, tbh. These days you tend to get better support from the megacorps if you tweet or post on HN, it can bypass the obligatory outsourced support layer.

It might be true about some other big tech companies but AMZN is exceptionally obstinate.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#130

Post by davidmurdoch »

ghaff wrote: post #125
davidmurdoch wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a lot of our critical stuff backed up to tape drives still?

"A lot"? Sure, I guess. But as someone who stores multiple copies of everything both onsite and in the "cloud," I certainly don't have local tape backup and I doubt that Backblaze does either.

I mean "critical stuff" like banks and government data, not regular users.
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