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How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

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Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#81

Post by dpcan »

zperrault wrote: post #71

I noticed there hasn't been any mention of attempting to recover your deleted files from your local disk. If you haven't tried it yet it is worth a shot. There are a few software solutions out there that will scan your disk for files that have been deleted. On Windows I have used Piriform's Recuva[1] and on OS X I have used PhotoRec[2], both have worked rather well. It is worth noting that the longer you wait to try…

Or, I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow he posts that he found them all in his trash.... Because nobody ever thinks to clear it. Sometimes the simplest solution is right under our nose.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#83

Post by ai_ja_nai »

gabemart wrote: post #13

I think this bug should be considered completely separately from how unwise it is to use a cloud service as the sole storage of important files. Regardless of the circumstances, losing user files against the wishes of the user is the absolute worst thing a cloud backup provider can do . Even for files that are deleted intentionally and unambiguously by the user, I'm astonished that Dropbox actually deletes the files…

Is Dropbox a backup service? Nope. Dropbox is folder synch, a network version of a pendrive. Dropbox makes no guarantees about the durability of the data on their servers, which are merely a browsable cache.

Use proper backup services, instead, like Memopal.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#84

Post by DanBC »

steven2012 wrote: post #80

In today's digital age, I believe lots and lots of people will lose a lot of valuable information like photos because they don't have a good understanding of what backing up means. I've warned my friend who is computer illiterate that he is risking losing his childrens' complete photo collection for their entire lives because he is only keeping a single copy of his data on his hard drive. This is probably the situati…

Did that work?

Would it have been more effective to just provide him with a list of stuff - a choice of two drives; a choice of two softwares (with really easy URLs to buy and download) and instructions for using and testing.

That could be a gift for birthday or Xmas?

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#85

Post by ominous_prime »

steven2012 wrote: post #80

In today's digital age, I believe lots and lots of people will lose a lot of valuable information like photos because they don't have a good understanding of what backing up means. I've warned my friend who is computer illiterate that he is risking losing his childrens' complete photo collection for their entire lives because he is only keeping a single copy of his data on his hard drive. This is probably the situati…

This is becoming even more important with SSDs. I used to do a lot of data recovery, and photos were of course a very common type of data that customers wanted to recover.

If the drive was spinning, I could usually recover most of the data. Even if the drive was completely dead, there was still some chance at recovery of I had the correct logic board, and for a hefty price I could send it out to a company with more resources to get the platters spinning again.

SSDs can be much harder recover from, since you need information stored in the controller to map out the data, and many consumer level hard drives brick themselves on failure to prevent silent data corruption.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#86

Post by raverbashing »

icebraining wrote: post #64
raverbashing wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" from how unwise it is to use a cloud service as the sole storage of important files." I disagree (a little bit) There are some issues here: - Using a free service - Using a service that "thinks" when you want to add or remove stuff. Yes, it's easier to use, but it's not explicit, and it usually fails spectacularly. - Thinking that this "magical save thing" is equivalent to a backup.

You have knowledge that most people don't. If that's important to safely use Dropbox, it's their responsibility to inform the users.

Oh I agree with you

Maybe the whole issue is: a local delete turns into a remote delete, and that's pretty much non-reversible (unless you realize what you did, later)

Maybe they should add something like "You just deleted a lot of files from your DropBox, are you sure, please review and confirm" (if this was done through sync)

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#87

Post by snowwrestler »

icebraining wrote: post #67
Aardwolf wrote: post #42

I don't trust anything called "sync". I trust file operations "move", "copy" and "remove". But "sync" could mean anything: which side is syncing to which side? If something is not present on one side, will it delete it on the other? I wish the term didn't exist, and apps/clients/... would copy or even just load or show things, and if you want to "sync", then rsync with clear source and destination. Same with mail for…

Here "sync" means what Dropbox says it means. The answers to your questions are well defined in their software, even if to some other software, they might be different. I wish the term didn't exist, and apps/clients/... would copy or even just load or show things, and if you want to "sync", then rsync with clear source and destination. The source and destination is always clear. It's to the server and from the server…

I think "recency" is a better mental model than star topology for how Dropbox works.

The authoritative source of the data is whichever endpoint has been modified most recently. If you delete a file on one machine, it's then deleted on the server, and then on other machines. The file is gone everywhere.

If you then go to one of those machines and restore the file from a local backup, the file is re-uploaded to the server, and then each machine will re-download it. The file is back everywhere.

If you log into the web interface and delete it there, each of the machines will delete it as well. The file is gone everywhere.

At any point the controlling view of the data is the one that was most recently updated.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#88

Post by servowire »

The solution to this kind of problems is: Make Read-only "disaster recovery" backups - zip it and burn it to a DVD set or Bluray, and put it off-site. Make incrementals or differentials of those discs every few months and a full data set each 3 months.

Takes a few hours, I like to burn all my data to Bluray (50GB per disk) while watching a movie.

Store the bluray data sets at a friend's house and never worry again.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#89

Post by kalleboo »

rayiner wrote: post #47
kalleboo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It concerns me that the top several comments are some variation of "you shouldn't trust the cloud with your data." No, it's "you shouldn't trust one single thing with your data". Hardware fails. OSes have bugs (OS X's "space in your drive name and we delete your user folder.") Services have unexpected gotchas. This is why you never store anything in only one place. A sync service by definition is not a separate pla…

My point is that, for some reason, we have been conditioned to believe that bugs and data loss are just something that happen as opposed to something that service providers, who we pay money to, are charged with avoiding. We hold software to a much lower standard of quality than we hold other products and services.

* we have been conditioned to believe that bugs and data loss are just something that happen

They're something that happen to unregulated services that cost $8/month. If I paid $8/month for electricity, water or Internet access, yeah I'd expect yearly blackouts. To get an SLA you have to pay more.

Re: How a bug in Dropbox permanently deleted my 8000 photos

#90

Post by bruceboughton »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #39
bruceboughton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am a Backblaze customer but beware: backups of deleted files are deleted after 30 days.

Your definition of backup...

Which is why I don't solely use Backblaze (fast recovery, medium level of trust). I also backup the same data to Glacier-class S3 (slow recovery, high level of trust) and Time Machine (v. quick recovery, same-site risk).
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