"Ultimately, trusting one's data – particularly data on which a business depends – to any sort of cloud storage should only be done after fully understanding the implications of the services' terms and conditions."

Namely, that it's somebody else's computer and your files aren't as valuable to them as they are to you.

This is hardly the first time one of the big on-line giants has done this, which is why my files live on my local hard-drive, and backup drive. I simply don't trust Google, Apple and company to protect me.

Beyond that though is the reality that if my rural Internet or mobile service go down - a fairly common thing around here - I can still keep working on projects until it returns.

And yet software companies keep pushing this cloud nonsense.

Presumably to train their AI on it or do other not so pleasant (to the owner) things with them.

Don't use drive, but do use Onedrive (cos the 6 user deal is brilliant value for money)

Always store locally, and preferably on multiple computers

A NAS sitting at a remote site download to that (Synology has an app for this)

Use RSync to copy that data back to a server sitting at home.

The NAS and my local server all have versions - I don't trust cloud data storage, but I do like its idea and simplicity when it works

The cloud is not entirely the issue here (trust me as one Doctor to another).

The problem is confusing file sync with file backup whether you're syncing to a cloud drive or to a NAS device in the same room as you which you can see and touch and administrate.

Any user who doesn't know the difference between sync and backup (and there are many) will lose data, however much they value those data, irrespective of whether it's in the cloud or directly attached to their own network.

You are quite correct but tbh they do sell these services like they are a backup in and of themselves, especially on the consumer side.

People will learn. Eventually.

The hard way.

I've seen people post about similar issues with iCloud Drive, though that tends to be losing arbitrary files over an extended period of time, so it typically takes much longer to notice. Whilst the majority of replies are of the "No, it's inconceivable that Apple could lose your files, it must be user error", there's also invariably the "It's your fault for not understanding the difference between syncing and backup" ones.

Trouble is, it isn't that straightforward as Apple often offloads local versions of files and in some cases even automatically excludes synced files from backups with Time Machine, so when you do find iCloud has randomly deleted some of your files, even if you've still got backups going back far enough, there's no guarantee they will even have been included in it. I'm not sure if Google Drive also works the same way.

I remember when I got my first camera as a kid and taking my first film to the chemist to be developed. They gave me a receipt and said to be sure to look after it because I'd need it to get my photos. I kept it safe and read and re-read the bit that said something like "Films are accepted on the basis that their value does not exceed the cost of the items submitted". It was a long time before I understood what it meant, and a lesson I'd rather not learn the hard way.

"your files aren't as valuable to them as they are to you"

Your files are only as valuable to them as how much you are paying them to store those files (which for a large chunk of users is $0, and for almost every other user is less than the value the user would put on the data)

Namely, that it's somebody else's computer and your files aren't as valuable to them as they are to you.

Exactly. The few times I've had to use the cloud, I still kept a back up locally. Saved my self headaches and stress several times when the datacenter crashed. I guess being an old-school grump and suspicious of many things has paid off over the years.

Google's online and cloud services are highly suspect. We've already had incidents of serious data loss in their Cloud Storage service (no such thing ever happened with Amazon S3), and we even had our entire cloud account locked out for a few days, due to an unspecified "violation of their T&Cs" and usage policies. I suspect we'll be heading back to AWS in the near future.

On a personal level, Google Photos is incredibly erratic and unreliable, with the opposite problem to that described here: stuff coming back from the dead! The number of times my 15GB free storage has nearly filled up, because stuff deleted ages ago suddenly returns - it's infuriating. When you try to create space by downloading blocks of photos for offline management, it fails at least 50% of the time due to an unspecified "network error". Google's online tools are frankly painful, but my only alternative is to go and get an iPhone, and I'm not quite ready for that....

I'd be wary of iCloud. I barely use it and only store gig and travel tickets using the free allowance in case I lose the paper when I'm out and about. It seems that I'm one of the "tiny minority" that has the synch problem whereby files will stop synching up to iCloud from Mac and down to iDevices from iCloud, needing manual intervention in both cases to make it synch.

Well, this is Google we're talking about.

Words like dependable, quality, permanent, trustworthy only appear in the same sentence as Google when accompanied by a negative.

my only alternative is to go and get an iPhone, and I'm not quite ready for that....

Sync your gallery to another service or NextCloud.

Yet again:

If you have your files in the cloud, that's fine. No problem.

But where's YOUR backup? Not Google's. Not AWS's. But yours. Where's YOUR other location, entirely independent of that cloud service, where you have a full, complete and up-to-date copy of your data?

If you can't answer that question, you don't have a backup.

You could backup to ANOTHER cloud... that's fine. So long as your recognise that the Internet connection is then a shared access to both your backups.

But ONE cloud from ONE provider is ONE backup, no matter how many drives or datacentres it's stored on.

Same way that ONE SAN from ONE provider is ONE backup, no matter how many drives or network cabinets it's stored on.

You also need a location entirely independent of your residence.

You can have as many backups as you want, but if your house catches fire it's like you didn't have one. (Unless you keep the drives in fire proof container, but still...)

You should also consider physical location outside of the jurisdiction you reside in and possibly even different continent or two.

100ft down the garden is farther away than my next door neighbour.

Would it survive being showered with burning debris from your house?

Have one of their early drives attached to my NAS as a backup device!

Literally any item that "conjoins" two backups makes them dependent on each other:

- Physical location

- Power source

- Internet connection

- Credit card you signed up to the service with

- The only guy who knows the login

Anything at all.

And though there's no problem with having "dependent" backups, you have to know that and understand what that means when the credit card is blocked or the Internet connection goes off and now both those backups will be inaccessible until you resolve that problem.

But one of above items is most definitely:

- Service provider.

So having two independent data copies in two different continents but BOTH run by Google, say... bam... you just made dependent backups again.

A Fireproof container might help, but I have some doubts it is really adequate. Computer media do not like heat, and building fires are nothing if not hot. I recall seeing pictures of a bag of silver dollars melted together by a California brush fire. The melting point of Silver is 916C. The ignition point of paper -- which is probably what a fireproof box is intended to protect is -- 233C. The maximum storage temperature for computer media seems mostly to be around 70C or less -- a number that I personally wouldn't have all that much faith in.

If your data is important to you, I'd suggest a backup someplace offsite as well as backups on site. Even the trunk of a car might be better than anything on site. And a backup in the cloud as well won't do any harm if doesn't cost too much and if one's internet connection is fast enough.

Sadly, storage media are not completely reliable. Neither are web service providers. Encryption (if you need to use it) can be slow, And there's a real risk that you may not be able to decrypt the files for any of dozens of reasons. Saving all your data can be difficult without a fast data link -- which is not an option for many people. and attempting to update only altered files gets complicated if you encrypt.

Truth is that many of us probably need multiple backups done regularly ... and a bit of luck.

external hdd's are cheap, or if like me, you have a few spare after ssd upgrades just get some cheap caddies.

If you have a locker at work, that is great, use that. I used to store a couple of disks in the glove box of the car.

NAS down at my sisters is my main backup

And what do your backups actually include?

Unless you had a local copy of the file on your device, then all you're backing up is a link to a Cloud server that's already lost the file you're trying to recover.

What's to stop one Cloud provider using another for some if their storage needs?

Are you saying that your data on someone else's computer isn't actually more safe?

You're not being very Googly. Let us meet somewhere to chat. We know when and where, and we'll see you there.

Docs

Android

Chromebooks

Gmail

Photos

Chrome

Search

and everything else.

All I can say.... Stupid Fools.

You forgot Pixel phone!

Remembering a poster I saw in an anarchist coffee shop:

“It’s not ‘the cloud’, it’s someone else’s computer”

" trusting one's data – particularly data on which a business depends – to any sort of cloud storage should only never be done "

There. Fixed that for you.

And I'm sure this is nothing to do with Google deleting data in "inactive" accounts.

I know from work the number of times "inactive" data is targeted and it picks up newly created stuff as well...

" just because files are being stored in the cloud, there is no guarantee that they are safe "

There is a significant probability that they're less safe, as you have no control over what happens to your files and the provider doesn't give a toss about individual users. If you use the cloud you need local backups, so why use the cloud?

The only benefits of cloud (scalable resourcing for business and access from anywhere for private folks) have to be weighed against the loss of control.

"There is a significant probability that they're less safe"

To be fair, there are people who take worse care of their data than the average cloud provider does. For those people, cloud storage may be beneficial -- not because it's perfectly safe (it isn't) but because it's better than what they're willing and able to do on their own.

If you can't learn to cross the road safely, it doesn't matter how many people you (don't) pay to hold your hand, one day, something terrible will happen to you.

So you need to wake up and learn.

if you are not a techy, how many people are doing any kind of backup ?

The cloud isn't perfect - as this shows, but for most it is far superior than what they had before - aka nothing

My partner had the same problem. Took about 2 days but I managed to recover her stuff.

1. Uninstall Google Drive.

2. Install an old version of Google Drive (there's a version 82/83 floating around on the internet).

3. Disable the 2 Google Update services (they won't be running, but they still need to be disabled).

4. Disable the Google Update scheduled tasks (2 of them).

5. Make sure Google Drive is not running.

6. In the User Data folder, go into Google > DriveFS > the folder with a long number.

7. In that folder there's a folder called backups, which has another folder with a couple of long numbers. Move all of the files from the "Backup" folder into the main folder (from step 6).

8. Start Google Drive.

9. Go into your G Drive (or wherever it is) and copy _absolutely everything_ somewhere else outside of Google Drive.

Due to the way that Google caches stuff, what you have locally will be your latest files. The problem looks to be that things weren't being uploaded properly.

10. If you want to carry on using Google Drive (!!!), re-enable the update services and wait for Google Drive to update. It will then sign you out and reset your local state to what it had in the cloud.

11. Use a tool like robocopy to overwrite the contents of your G Drive with what you had copied elsewhere.

Maybe they used ZFS and discovered reading not-quite-written data causes corruption, hehehehe.

Seriously though I suspect it is a cache-sync issue here. Same sort of idea but a different level.

I would like to see the cloud operators enter into a big mutual agreement where none charge egress data fees for backups to another cloud provider.

But I can't see them doing it, even though a simple API call on their platform could wipe everything.

If you are on M365 you have the option of independent backups to AWS or elsewhere from ISVs.

I have said for years, people who choose to live in the cloud will eventually die in the cloud.