News Google Drive users are reporting the loss of months of data

[Admin]

User reports have come in complaining about months of data lost from their Google Drive accounts.

Google Drive users are reporting the loss of months of data : Read more

 

[PEnns]

Sooner or later....it's bound to happen.

People and companies seem to forget (or willfully ignore) that "The Cloud" is just a fancy name for "Someone Else's Server".

 

[BX4096]

Don't you worry, the invisible men in the cloud took all your data straight to data heaven.

If you behave, you may just see it in the next life.

 

[ravewulf]

Small suggestion, using "his/her" disrupts the flow of the article a bit; using the singular "their" would be less clunky.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

Yikes... I've never had any trouble with my Google Drive yet. This news is unpleasant.
It's one of my 4 backups, so I wouldn't lose anything if there's a problem. It'd just be an annoyance to have to re-upload stuff, since my upload speed isn't the fastest.

 

[vern72]

Stories like this needs to get out to the general public so that they will make their own backups.

 

[bit_user]

Somewhere around 6-8 months ago, I found missing & corrupt files on my Microsoft OneDrive account, at work. The folders where I noticed the problems weren't business-critical, luckily. The next day, things seemed to be back to how I expected them, so I don't know if I just happened to check on them while things were somehow in flux, or if the problem was detected and the files restored from backup. I'm hoping everything was recovered, though I don't have any way to be certain.

Needless to say, it definitely shook my confidence. OneDrive is the only place they provide for us to keep our normal files, like documents, spreadsheets, etc. We're not allowed to back them up anywhere else! Only if it's something like source code, could we put it in a Github Enterprise repository.

BTW, I also somewhat recently discovered some 15-year old emails had gotten corrputed, in an old Hotmail account. Hotmail is owned by Microsoft and has now been transitioned into their Office 365 product.

 

[HaninTH]

BTW, I also somewhat recently discovered some 15-year old emails had gotten corrputed, in an old Hotmail account. Hotmail is owned by Microsoft and has now been transitioned into their Office 365 product.

I'm honestly surprised they even kept the data going that far back. I would have figured they'd have dumped it or "asked" you to back it up when they dumped all of the email domains on to Azure.

 

[bit_user]

I'm honestly surprised they even kept the data going that far back. I would have figured they'd have dumped it or "asked" you to back it up when they dumped all of the email domains on to Azure.

I never received such a notice. Old emails are going to be small and therefore cheap for them to carry forward. Remember, they had limits on how big your mailbox could be.

People have an expectation that their emails will be retained, absent a policy to the contrary. Consider personal emails exchanged with family members who may no longer be with us. If they were on my local computer, I'd back them up. However, with them already in the cloud, I figured my backups were less reliable than letting Microsoft handle it.

 

[HaninTH]

Consider personal emails exchanged with family members who may no longer be with us. If they were on my local computer, I'd back them up. However, with them already in the cloud, I figured my backups were less reliable than letting Microsoft handle it.

I never depend on anyone else with data I feel is important to me. Nor have I ever operated with the assumption that my data is safe anywhere other than on my various backup repos. Even then, I'm praying the advertised longevity of the storage mediums are as good as they say they are.

It's like from another article on TH where users kept personal data on work computers and are shocked by the lack of concern the IT team at their workplaces have for their personal data on a work supplied computer. It should never have been there to begin with.

Something about assuming...

 

[bit_user]

I never depend on anyone else with data I feel is important to me. Nor have I ever operated with the assumption that my data is safe anywhere other than on my various backup repos. Even then, I'm praying the advertised longevity of the storage mediums are as good as they say they are.

Well, you've got to test your backups! If you're not going to test them, then you ultimately have yourself to blame if they're bad.

See? The bar is very high, for doing your own backups. Most people won't bother with backups, much less going the whole way of checking them and having off-site backups, too. There are other things in life.

 

[HaninTH]

Testing can't help you if the drive/medium dies right after you test or in-between testing.

My personal biggest issue isn't really the mediums/testing, it is the encryption passwords placed upon them!

Lots of data everywhere and no card catalog in sight!

 

[bit_user]

Testing can't help you if the drive/medium dies right after you test or in-between testing.

Usually the SMART statistics will give you some clues that the medium is starting to fail.

The other thing to do is compute checksums over the data, which you can then verify to validate the integrity of the backup. Some filesystems will do this for you.

Lots of data everywhere and no card catalog in sight!

If it's your own data, then part of the challenge is to come up with a scheme organized enough that you can manage it all.

I get that it's not easy, and that's why we can't expect most people to do it.

 

[USAFRet]

Testing can't help you if the drive/medium dies right after you test or in-between testing.

Thats why you do not trust one single device.

3-2-1

3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise unavailable.

 

[Deleted member 2962262]

I suspect that Gen x (and older) are more likely to recognise the need for backups to cloud storage (all those hazy memories of floppy disks failing).