The mystery of the disappearing Google Drive files
www.theregister.com
The horror of logging in only to find everything since May has vanished

UPDATED Google Drive users are reporting files mysteriously disappearing from the service, with some netizens on the goliath’s support forums claiming six or more months of work have unceremoniously vanished.

The issue has been rumbling for a few days, with one user logging into Google Drive and finding things as they were in May 2023.

  • _number8_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    473·
    2 years ago

    i distinctly remember 10 years ago being so excited about the cloud stuff, it seemed so futuristic, tech had so many wonderful potentials, having it autosave and automatically be accessible anywhere seemed so amazing…

    then the enshittification started. i would never dream of letting google or apple touch my files, let alone be the sole backup and arbiter of them. nothing gold can stay…

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      And I distinctly remember being asked the first time if I wanted to back up my phone photos to the cloud and thinking fuck no, some photos are private and I don’t want them leaving my device automatically. And was soon validated by all the stories of screensavers using those photos and embarrassing ones popping up, which was fucking wild to me because just making your photos randomly your screen saver also sounded like an immediate bad idea that could easily go wrong.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Do you not have anything in the cloud or do you use another service? I was using carbonite but I gave them up years ago.

      • d3lta19@lemmy.caEnglish
        8·
        2 years ago

        I have a local backup of everything in my NAS and then I create a nighty backup to backblaze B2. Costs like 1-2$ a month for 400ish GB. Never rely on one solution.

  • FiveMacs@lemmy.caEnglish
    203·
    2 years ago

    Perfect example of why letting some company that doesn’t give two shits about you, hold your important documents or whatever is a stupid idea…cloud storage is inherently bad and no company can be trusted more then storing your own data at home on a secure drive or two.

    • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.worldBanned from communityEnglish
      24·
      2 years ago

      Lololol every neckbeard nerd a few minutes before they lose years of family pictures.

      I definitely wouldn’t have ever lost that data 🤣🤦‍♂️

  • GonzoVeritas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    151·
    2 years ago

    Google is fine for most people, but it shouldn’t be the sole backup. If you don’t have (at least) 3 separate instances of a backup, you don’t really have a reliable backup strategy. Preferably an onsite hard backup, an offsite hard backup, and a cloud backup.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      I know quite a few tech oriented people and I don’t know anyone who actually has the holy trinity of backups. I know quite a few who have physical backups at home and cloud though.

    • theherk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 years ago

      Considering data durability for some data services are providing 11 9’s, just two of those leads to extremely high durability. So to say that is unreliable is just not reasonable. I have no problem with being risk averse but that is a bit extreme.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    What do people use to have backups of their google drive content?

  • archchan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    112·
    2 years ago

    Self-hosting my files with Nextcloud and couldn’t be happier

  • krigo666@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1219·
    2 years ago

    Have you read the Terms of Service of Google Drive for regular users?? You will give Google irrevocable and total rights on everything that is placed there for them to use as they see fit. It bewilders me how people still use that ‘service’…