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I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

googledrivesucks.com

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Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#131

Post by peterwiese »

zhodge wrote: post #87
carlesfe wrote: post #13

I feel really, really sorry for OP. However, since Google closed my adsense account without any serious reason, I learned not to trust them, so I keep backups of every service I have with them. I'd recommend anyone who uses Google Docs to download a zip file of their Drive weekly, and if possible, use some of the backup tools like [Insync]. Overall, I agree that the Google Drive interface is not totally clear about w…

Would you say Insync is worth the $10 if I only have one Drive account that I want to back up? They do offer backups, right? Their site seems to advertise multiple account sync as its biggest feature.

I use insync on Linux since no official client is offered from Google. I paid the $ 10 after testing for two weeks or so. It works 100% reliably as far as I can tell. I am very satisfied with it. And the files are actually all there, offline, on my hard drive. The automatically open up in libre office when I double click. Changes are synced back immediately. Neat.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#132

Post by farski »

jchung wrote: post #40
casca wrote: post #8

Everyone hates making backups. Everyone loves them when something happens. There are many free online data storage systems. If you're happy with the privacy implications, it's not hard to run Google Drive, Dropbox and box.net on the same directory for some degree of resilience.

Can you explain how that would have helped him at all? Backing up gdoc files is useless if the underlying file in the cloud has been deleted.

Because the backup should have been of the documents, not the gdoc files.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#134

Post by mh- »

cldr wrote: post #68
jchung wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Seems a pretty simple solution: the browser is the editor, even if the files are local. We use browsers to interact with local files all the time, for example during local web app development.

Only that's impossible as it is now (and will be for the forseeable future) because it wouldn't be very wise to give browser apps write access to the local filesystem.

sandboxes.

http://developer.chrome.com/apps/fileSystem.html

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#135

Post by mh- »

blcknight wrote: post #42
crazygringo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point is that if you see a bunch of ".gdoc" files on your computer, and you move them to another directory on your computer, you would reasonably expect that those files contain the document data, not that they're merely "pointers" to online data. That's "kind of the whole point", as you yell. I agree that the user wasn't being super-careful, but it's entirely reasonable to think that, if Google docs appear o…

The links thing is stupid, but it does tell you. http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png

That screenshot really ought to be in the original link. Kinda changes how bad I feel about this.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#136

Post by FigBug »

gknoy wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know the internals of my Word or Pages documents. [...] But nobody expects it to be a mere "pointer" link. While Word and Excel (and plenty of other kinds of non-cloud document) files usually contain data besides links, and sometimes contain no links, they can contain content which is non-obviously (from visual inspection) provided through a link which is broken if the file is moved. And, unlike gdocs, you…

When you drag something out of your folder on your local machine, how does gdocs give you a warning? (I'm curious, having never tried it.)

I'm assuming there is a background process that monitors the folder for changes. On my machine there is about a 3.5 second delay between moving the file and getting the warning. And if you click "OK, move to trash" it only trashes it in gdrive, you still have the file wherever you moved it. It's not a finder dialog box and can get lost behind other windows. It's bizarre UI.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#137

Post by FigBug »

atoponce wrote: post #130

So, let me get this straight. You moved everything to Google Drive, not keeping a local copy. Then you emptied the trash. And you didn't have a backup of your documents, but instead decided to leave everything in the cloud. Then, when something goes wrong, you blame Google. Am I understanding correctly?

Nope, not understanding it at all. He moved files out of his google drive, but the files aren't files, just links to the cloud. So even though he still has the files, they have no data in them.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#138

Post by dragonwriter »

FigBug wrote: post #136
gknoy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you drag something out of your folder on your local machine, how does gdocs give you a warning? (I'm curious, having never tried it.)

I'm assuming there is a background process that monitors the folder for changes. On my machine there is about a 3.5 second delay between moving the file and getting the warning. And if you click "OK, move to trash" it only trashes it in gdrive, you still have the file wherever you moved it. It's not a finder dialog box and can get lost behind other windows. It's bizarre UI.

> I'm assuming there is a background process that monitors the folder for changes.

I would assume its the same Google Drive background process that syncs changes made to files in the folder back to Drive, just using special handling for the case of "you moved a file that is a link to content in a Google web service and rather than a normal file".

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#139

Post by victorhooi »

blcknight wrote: post #42
crazygringo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point is that if you see a bunch of ".gdoc" files on your computer, and you move them to another directory on your computer, you would reasonably expect that those files contain the document data, not that they're merely "pointers" to online data. That's "kind of the whole point", as you yell. I agree that the user wasn't being super-careful, but it's entirely reasonable to think that, if Google docs appear o…

The links thing is stupid, but it does tell you. http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png

Yeah, I think it's disingenous that the OP didn't mention that warning message, or the screenshot.

I still feel bad for him - but the warning clearly says:

"An item you recently removed from your Google Drive folder has been moved to your trash on drive.google.com.

This item is just a link. If you empty your trash on drive.google.com, this item will be permanently deleted."

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#140

Post by [deleted] »

victorhooi wrote: post #139
blcknight wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The links thing is stupid, but it does tell you. http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png

Yeah, I think it's disingenous that the OP didn't mention that warning message, or the screenshot. I still feel bad for him - but the warning clearly says: "An item you recently removed from your Google Drive folder has been moved to your trash on drive.google.com. This item is just a link. If you empty your trash on drive.google.com, this item will be permanently deleted."

[deleted]
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