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Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

theregister.com

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Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#261

Post by sebmellen »

freedomben wrote: post #45
sebmellen wrote: post #24

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…

I do the same thing for Drive, but with rclone (which is free as in speech and beer). rclone makes it trivial to keep a mirror on backblaze and locally, which has come in quite handy a few times. I've elevated to rclone fanboy since I discovered crypt: https://rclone.org/crypt/

Wow, Crypt is awesome.

I’ve never looked into rclone although I’ve heard much about it. Looks very cool. I didn’t know it supported Google Drive.

One nice thing about CubeBackup is that it handles all of the Workspace account, not just the Drive file storage, but also the contacts, emails, etc. all of which is equally important to me.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#262

Post by zerocrates »

lonestar wrote: post #88
RobotToaster wrote: post #73

Is there any word if this is actively syncing deletions to local storage? I have my google drive synced to multiple computers which I assumed was enough...

I was hit by this. It looks like my laptop had not been syncing correctly for a couple months, then GDrive overwrote my local “My Drive” folder with the old cloud copy.

I was going to say, from what I've seen it looks like this kind of problem: a problem with the desktop sync, rather than Google's cloud storage itself.

The sync problem at the same time feels more likely and worse, as if the files never touched Google's servers and its sync went and deleted them, there'd be nothing they could do.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#263

Post by latexr »

gruez wrote: post #211
latexr wrote: post #189

> MatthewSt reports that he has a fix Let’s see the instructions on that link. > 2. Install an old version of Google Drive (there's a version 82/83 floating around on the internet). This is awful advice. If you have a link, share it. Considering the number of people this is affecting, chances are increasing that the version you find “floating around on the internet” is malware.

>Considering the number of people this is affecting, chances are increasing that the version you find “floating around on the internet” is malware. The windows installer at least is digitally signed to prevent this issue.

Apps and installers on macOS are also signed but there’s always a way to go around it. Simplest method is for the malware author to resign it, since effectively no one will verify the signature is from the correct source. But even then you can always convince people to disable System Integrity Protection to install crap. Despite it being a convoluted process, never underestimate what someone who is not tech savvy but is desperate can do. They will install anything and jump through any hoop the malware author walks them through with nice screenshots.

I doubt there’s no way to trick people the same way on Windows. Perhaps I’m wrong, and if I am I’d welcome learning how that system works.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#264

Post by withinboredom »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #153
withinboredom wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't sign away your rights, no matter what a contract says, in some places, tort still applies. Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but just because there is a limit on liability, does not mean there is a limit on damages and tort.

a limit on liability, does not mean there is a limit on damages and tort. This is exactly what Google intends it to mean. Good luck convincing a judge otherwise. In some places, the fact there is no signed contract and no exchange took place (free tier) means there is no liability --- the user received everything they paid for.

If I ask you to hold my phone and say “don’t blame me if it breaks” and we agree. Then you deliberately smash my phone, you caused me a damage and broke the terms of the contract. In this imaginary case, there was an implied agreement that you would hold the phone, but you didn’t. You smashed it. You aren’t protected from your liability agreement because it no longer applies.

This same thing applies here. Intellectual property has value. Google agreed to hold that value and not delete it. They stopped holding the property and smashed it. Their liability clause no longer works because they broke the contract. It doesn’t matter if money changed hands or not. Damage is damage.

I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know shit.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#265

Post by atYevP »

joshspankit wrote: post #111
happymellon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, why are the choices so bad. I wouldn't trust Google with anything important these days. But Teams/SharePoint/OneDrive is so bad. I don't think that selfhosting is a great option for corporate, but Microsoft and Google are just shit.

Feels like a good opportunity for someone to build the “do one thing and do it well” file storage on top of B2. Backblaze has a simple approach that stores 30% recovery data next to the files (and self-heals) while also storing customer data in multiple offsite locations. Build the ability for integrations (with customer-visible audit logs), inter-user sharing, and proper permissions and you have the modern equivalen…

Yev here -> we work pretty well with Movebot (https://community.movebot.io/hc/en-us/articles/360001557095-...) where you can set up a Gdrive to B2 sync/backup. And Rclone can do that as well (https://www.backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-integrate-rclon...) so there's a few ways to do this.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#266

Post by mulmen »

fareesh wrote: post #173
SamBam wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that "self-hosted" meant precisely that they own the box. A hard drive is under $10/terabyte.

Ah I assumed it was self-hosted but in the cloud somewhere

Self hosted means not in the cloud.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#267

Post by mulmen »

JohnFen wrote: post #220
jacobyoder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but it will surprise no one to learn I never heard anything back" (surprisingly?) ... I have colleagues that, even in 2023 , will express genuine (not sarcastic shock) when a megacorp doesn't reply or provide decent support. I've only got a few, but the refrain will be something like "wow, I'm kinda surprised google's cloud support doesn't get back to us - sometimes for days. they've always had such a good reputatio…

> they've always had such a good reputation for support I'm genuinely curious as to what group they have a good reputation for support with.

People who have not yet had a problem.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#268

Post by chickenpotpie »

notRobot wrote: post #252
chickenpotpie wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending google or saying they haven't done anything wrong here, but it is insanely hard to make Google drive. I very much doubt Google drive has a staff of any where near 100k employees and it's probably the largest file browser ever made. It's an engineering marvel. Can Google do better? Absolutely. But, it's objectively wrong to say there's nothing hard about building something like Google drive. I think…

If you've made it and released it to a the public (and it has paid tiers!) then you better have made it right. This is the case for both buildings and data storage systems.

Nothing I said disagrees with your statement. In fact, I specifically said they could do better. My point is that it's wrong to say google drive is easy to build or maintain.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#269

Post by jacquesm »

sebmellen wrote: post #257
jacquesm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried a restore?

Yes, probably once every 2-3 months. There’s a great interface for restoring specific files. I keep the version history to infinite, so even if files are corrupted or lost on newer backups I can always reference the old ones, back to day 0. Backblaze is great for this as the storage price is negligible. I think it works in a similar way to Tarsnap or something like Duplicati, but it’s a lot easier to manage and plugs…

Thank you, that is great to hear.

Re: Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer data

#270

Post by Dylan16807 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #222
Dylan16807 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's free if it's big enough to get their attention, and the culprit is known. But I don't want free revenge, I want my stuff/money back. An actual remedy.

I want my stuff/money back. As the Rolling Stones pointed out years ago (maybe before you were born), "You can't always get what you want" --- yadda, yadda, etc., etc.. It is not just about giving you what you want. The fact that *legal* retribution of some sort applies if someone takes or destroys your stuff is a defining characteristic of "ownership".

Interesting that you cut the line there, because control over personal possessions usually goes under the "need" category.

Anyway I'm still not sure what point you were originally trying to make, because defeating a landlord in court and getting paid back is at least as good of a proof of "ownership".

Both situations have big flaws in the legal recourse, but you definitely have it in both situations.

Though I prefer the one where I get compensation.

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