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Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

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Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#231
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Photos set to download all the files locally, and those get backed up with Time Machine and Backblaze. People forget even s3 will lose files. The reliability is high sure but it’s still sub 100%

Has S3 ever lost a file yet? I know that the reliability isn't 100% as that isn't possible in the real world. But I've never heard a report of a file that was confirmed as stored being lost, and I was under the impression that this was in the category "bound to happen eventually, but hasn't happened yet".

Probably not in the way you're thinking.

But with cloud systems you can always lose your files when a hacker gets access to your root account and holds it hostage, or you lose the phone with the 2fa secret on, or your payment doesn't go through and you miss the reminders, or your account is wrongly closed for abuse by a malfunctioning bot.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#232

How does people even notice that their data has gone missing? I can barely find my own documents in the train wreck that is the Google Drive UI. Any document written by anyone else in the organization can generally be considered lost unless you have a direct link sitting in an email or bookmark.

> How does people even notice that their data has gone missing?

That’s what I want to know too. Try to reconcile the cloud sync systems to make sure you aren’t missing anything. It’s basically impossible.

I also go crazy when I see MS touting OneDrive as a backup. I’m pretty sure moving (because of files-on-demand) my data to OneDrive where I can’t verify they aren’t losing stuff is not a backup. Add the risk of being banned and it becomes unconscionable IMO.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#233

This is why I run a personal Google Workspace account which has regular (hourly) backups managed by a self-hosted CubeBackup instance. It's quite a nice system: I get daily email summaries from CubeBackup via email, and I'm able to back up all the Google Drive/Email/Contacts/etc. data to both my local Synology NAS and Backblaze B2. I have absolutely no affiliation with CubeBackup, but I highly recommend it (and a per…

Synology NAS can already do this without any third-party products via the ActiveBackup application. Supports Google Workspace and MS 365. It’s free, assuming you already own the Synology NAS. It replicates data from Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Drive within seconds or minutes, keeps a history of all changes and offers a nice timeline view to show and export data at any point in time.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have backup both to Google Photos and iCloud. The probability of both failing and/or both deciding to just delete my account because I look "suspicious" is very small. But I _have_ had iCloud mysteriously not being able to retreive old photos.

Never had iCloud lose any of my data and I've been using it since not long after it launched, but now I'm a little concerned. With photos I do keep them all local to my MacBook, but not documents. Maybe I should.

iCloud is not very reliable for me. It did mysteriously delete photos and files. I always use it just as a secondary backup since then, never as a primary backup

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#235

Anecdotal, but with Google Photos, I've observed data loss to the point where I no longer trust the service with anything valuable. Photos I know I've taken are missing. There are periods of time when I walked around a city 10+ years ago taking a large volume of photos, like when I first moved to Seattle. Going back to that window of time in Google Photos, I only have a handful of photos from that walk. There are als…

Tangentially related, if you've ever had the pleasure of migrating away from Google Photos/Drive with Google Takeout, prepare to spend some time fixing photo metadata in your library and re-embedding exif data with exiftool. Takeout strips out the exif data into a non-standard JSON sidecar, as opposed to something more standard/well supported like XMP. It's unfortunately hostile for non-technical users that care abou…

> Tangentially related, if you've ever had the pleasure of migrating away from Google Photos/Drive with Google Takeout, prepare to spend some time fixing photo metadata in your library and re-embedding exif data with exiftool. Takeout strips out the exif data into a non-standard JSON sidecar, as opposed to something more standard/well supported like XMP.

I heard this claim before but I was never able to reproduce it. Does this only happen with the "Storage Saver" option enabled and/or when metadata has been manually changed? At least with the "Original Quality" option my takeout data seems to exactly match the files that were originally uploaded.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#237
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google photos user this is really fucked up. I primarily use Google photos to manage my kids pictures as well what did you move to?

https://mega.io The quality of their software is vastly superior to Google Drive. They have mobile, desktop, and CLI apps on Windows/Apple/Linux. Been using them for a year without issues.

This company is owned by Kim Dotcom, isn't it? Are you ok with entrusting him anything of value?

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#238

This is a royal fuck up. Anyone using any g cloud service better be suspect when using their services. Amazing how some folks can't get a job at google if they can't invert a binary tree. Perhaps hire folks with relevant skills rather than folks who can solve 2 leetcode mediums in under 45 mins?

This comment smells very much like you think you are The One. Or that The One is out there somewhere [1]. Bugs happen and this is a serious failure that Google needs to fix. But the idea that incompetents are doing the development or that Google hires puzzle solvers over technical talent is just not true. 1. https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/21/env/

I think you meant to link to https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/28/meta/

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#239
post #237
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mega.io The quality of their software is vastly superior to Google Drive. They have mobile, desktop, and CLI apps on Windows/Apple/Linux. Been using them for a year without issues.

This company is owned by Kim Dotcom, isn't it? Are you ok with entrusting him anything of value?

It was started by him but he is no longer involved. Even if he was still running the company I would trust him infinitely more than Google or Microsoft. Also I like that they are based in New Zealand.

Their software is well engineered and is open source. https://github.com/meganz

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#240
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Photos set to download all the files locally, and those get backed up with Time Machine and Backblaze. People forget even s3 will lose files. The reliability is high sure but it’s still sub 100%

Has S3 ever lost a file yet? I know that the reliability isn't 100% as that isn't possible in the real world. But I've never heard a report of a file that was confirmed as stored being lost, and I was under the impression that this was in the category "bound to happen eventually, but hasn't happened yet".

In December of 2012 AWS admitted that four files were lost: two completely deleted and two more truncated.
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