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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

#31

Post by toddmorey »

Osiris wrote: post #3

If he has the local copies of his documents from the local Google Drive sync, wouldn't he at least have that backup, or are the local files not really files at all but just pointers to the cloud storage files? If it's the latter, does that mean that's it's literally impossible to make backups of your Google Docs documents? If I were to use a another backup program to backup my Google Drive folder, it wouldn't be poss…

No, it sounds like in his case, they were just pointers. I wonder, too, what happens around offline access.

"The steps I took were to move files out of a Goole Drive folder on my local computer thinking that the files were all there. In fact they are there, but the .gdoc files are just empty links with no data. I see a list of everything I wrote in Google Docs, but can never see the actual content again."

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

#32

Post by drhayes9 »

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.

While this is a good strategy for real files, the .gdoc files in your Google Drive folder are nothing but links to web files. They contain no real data.

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

#34

Post by crazygringo »

blcknight wrote: post #4

Huh? If you remove the files from the copy of Google drive on your disk, they get removed on the web. It's one "drive." That's KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT. It's not poor user design. That they go to the trash is good user design, to prevent users from doings things like this guy did...

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 on your local hard drive, that they are files that can be manipulated just like any others, and that copying/moving them to another folder would preserve their data.

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

#35

Post by blcknight »

dchest wrote: post #10
blcknight wrote: post #4

Huh? If you remove the files from the copy of Google drive on your disk, they get removed on the web. It's one "drive." That's KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT. It's not poor user design. That they go to the trash is good user design, to prevent users from doings things like this guy did...

When you're moving a document off some drive, you expect a moved copy to work.

Except for the part when they tell you.

http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png

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

#36

Post by eli »

nailer wrote: post #16
blcknight wrote: post #4

Huh? If you remove the files from the copy of Google drive on your disk, they get removed on the web. It's one "drive." That's KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT. It's not poor user design. That they go to the trash is good user design, to prevent users from doings things like this guy did...

Yeah, I don't get this part. The user moved the files from google drive to his local disk. Aren't the files therefore still on his local disk? EDIT: re read article . Moving files into local disk deletes them on google drive and makes the moved versions useless links. Now agree with the author: that's goddamned terrible. EDIT 2: actually the files are always links, but if the links are moved outside google drive the…

"... the .gdoc files are just empty links with no data. I see a list of everything I wrote in Google Docs, but can never see the actual content again."

Google does not sync the data to you, just a tiny file with the same name as your data that bounces you to the website.

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

#37

Post by nollidge »

dendory wrote: post #11

He was unlucky and didn't think things through too much, especially when dealing with such imporant files, but I agree with him that the way it's implemented is silly. If you provide a program that syncs your documents, with the name of your files, to your local system, people expect these files to be your actual documents, not empty links. Every other online storage system works that way. If you move a file out of y…

But how could that possibly work for a document that's edited in a browser? What file format would such a document be stored in when there's no local editor available for it?

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

#38

Post by ISL »

FigBug wrote: post #25
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.

You can't make backups of gdoc files, the content is never stored locally, it's only on googles servers.

It's not possible to schedule an occasional job that copies everything from Google's services to a local hard disk?

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

#39

Post by jamesaguilar »

nailer wrote: post #16
blcknight wrote: post #4

Huh? If you remove the files from the copy of Google drive on your disk, they get removed on the web. It's one "drive." That's KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT. It's not poor user design. That they go to the trash is good user design, to prevent users from doings things like this guy did...

Yeah, I don't get this part. The user moved the files from google drive to his local disk. Aren't the files therefore still on his local disk? EDIT: re read article . Moving files into local disk deletes them on google drive and makes the moved versions useless links. Now agree with the author: that's goddamned terrible. EDIT 2: actually the files are always links, but if the links are moved outside google drive the…

No, the files in your drive "look like" they are files, but they are actually just links. So him moving them to the local disk did not actually copy the files to local disk.

The real failure here is that you shouldn't be able to move the drive links out of the drive folder, since semantically that does not actually move the files.

(Filed a bug, but I'm not on the Drive team so I can't really take responsibility for this getting fixed. It does seem like a problem to me, but I don't know their infrastructure nor the limitations of shell extensions, so I can't really comment on whether a fix is feasible either.)

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

#40

Post by jchung »

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.
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