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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

#141
Once you deleted your own local copy, the folder of photos on Dropbox was no longer a "backup." You just moved your one copy elsewhere. You essentially had NO backup. And everyone should know, you should always have at least two backups. (Again, you had zero.) I wouldn't even consider Dropbox (without Packrat) a valid backup destination either, because any changes get synced.

Sorry this happened to you, but better backup practices could have avoided it easily.

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

#142
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. "Dropbox is a home for all your photos, docs, videos, and files". -- https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1

Not to mention EVERY time I put an SD card in my machine dropbox does the pop-up and offers to store my photos in their cloud. Its actually more than a little annoying.

You can very easily turn that feature and pop=up off.

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

#143
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'different region' requirement might just depend on different things: - How far away are your office and home? - What is your locality? As an example, I don't live in a place prone to earthquakes or hurricanes, and my office is a 20 ~ 30 min drive from my home. What is the risk that both my office and home are destroyed?

It's all just a matter of risk management: - Simply copying your data to a second hard drive in the same machine protects against hard drive failure. - Second disconnected hard drive protects you from ransom-viruses and accidental erasures. - Second disconnected hard drive on the other side of the house gives you some protection from a fire (caught early enough). - Second disconnected hard drive in another building s…

> - Second disconnected hard drive in another region protects against large disasters (eg. single nuclear strike).

> - Second disconnected hard drive in another country protects against national disasters (eg. invasion, multiple nuclear strikes).

> - Second disconnected hard drive on another continent protects against major disasters (eg. moderate asteroid impact event)

I'm not really sure if worrying about my hard drive will be something high on the priority list in many of these events.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backups should be read only. If I can delete parts of a backup, it's just as susceptible to the same human mistakes that make them necessary in the first place.

The "Packrat" feature the parent comment mentioned keeps every version of a file you upload: https://www.dropbox.com/help/113

You can still permanently delete things. It's just harder.

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

#145

Sync is not backup. Sync is not backup. Sync is not backup. My strategy: a big external drive used for Time Machine, and a subscription to Backblaze. Both of these are all about retaining multiple versions, recovering from accidental deletion, and continuously backing up in the background. Dropbox is about syncing stuff between computers.

[deleted]

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

#146
I use both backblaze, as well as Google Drive. I don't have anything in particular I'd be completely upset if I lost it forever, which is why I dont do local backups, but I've definitely been looking at using Crashplan as a secondary backup. I just cant be bothered to hook my laptop up to an external when I hardly sit next to it anyway.

What does HN think? Safe if I went with 2 cloud backup providers?

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