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Some Google Drive Users' Files Have Mysteriously Vanished
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yes but this article is misleading for the non techies.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/sysp4ee93ca4/14.0/mac/14.0
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This really does not surprise me that this has happened, but it does surprise me that this does not happen more often with Google’s “services”.
Google Drive users have been warned not to disconnect their account within the Google Drive for desktop app, after a spate of reports of files going missing from the cloud service.
Alarm bells began ringing last week on Google's community support site when some users reported files mysteriously disappearing from Google Drive, with some posters claiming six or months of data had vanished.
As noted by The Register, one user logged into Google Drive to find things as they were in May 2023, with everything saved since that date gone, despite attempts by Google's support team to help them recover the files. Currently, the thread of complaints has 217 users who clicked the "I have the same question."
The Google Drive team has since posted that it is "investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users." In the meantime:
Google also recommends making a copy of the app data folder if there's space on your hard drive, until the sync issue is resolved. We'll update this article if we hear more.
- Do not click "Disconnect account" within Drive for desktop
- Do not delete or move the app data folder:
Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
Article Link: Some Google Drive Users' Files Have Mysteriously Vanished
That's right. You need to use a backup solution which will "materialise" cloud only files. Many will do this including Carbon Copy Cloner, Arq and Chronosync.
No, consider both.
Your NAS backs up your Google Drive in case Google Drive messes up.
Your Google Drive backs up your NAS in case your house burns down or gets robbed.
Yeah, I've lost stuff off iCloud too. I stopped using it altogether because of that.
I use Google Drive, but not as an integrated auto backup. More as a file store, both as an occasional backup with files manually copied, and as a way to share particular files. Plus the Google Docs etc are very useful and easy to use.
I hate all the integrated cloud auto backups, they make a mess of everything. Plus I am terrified that they will not only stuff up the cloud backup, but stuff up my laptop's drive. There's no way I want to give them write access to my drive.
I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my entire laptop to an external drive. So damn fast and reliable!
In my opinion, you need both a local backup AND a cloud backup. The local protects you if the cloud messes up. The cloud protects you if your house burns down or gets robbed.
The secret is mirroring. RAID 1. Mirroring the whole drive twice. So; if one or two fails, you still safe. I never trusted in backup systems anyway. For many years i've been doing that...
My father was a senior lecturer in mainframe computing in the leading company in my country (Robotron / GDR). He taught me that you back up data and the system individually. In today's world and with user computers, it hardly makes sense to back up the system, because you can rebuild the system quickly anyway and it is usually not critical. That's why I mirror my data - sorted by type - on external physical hard drives. If you do it right and use hard drives from different manufacturers (hard drives often fail in batches almost simultaneously), this is the perfect way to go.
RAID is not a backup, it alleviates disk failure and it's why you don't see anyone rely on it for critical data.
For anything critical you need to deploy (at least) the '3-2-1' rule - 3 copies of data, 2 local copies on differing media, 1 copy off-site. Anything short of the '3-2-1' rule is asking for trouble.
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"Pros" do not call it a RAID, because is not the same as a BACKUP. For convenience, the words are even spelled differently. RAID clusters only protect data in a few scenarios related to failure or destruction of node(s) in the array. There is SO much more that an go wrong. And we're about to be reminded again, that Google has zero liability for data loss, even in enterprise agreements. Maybe they refund the last month's subscription fee. Good luck recovering from business loss wit yo tree fiddy.
Just because you're mirroring data does not make it a RAID. In professional data centers, RAID 1 mirroring is a VERY specific technical implementation for high availability hot FAILOVER, so a computer and/or application continues to use the expected LUN even if one node fails; the RAID controller senses the failure and re-designates a different device as primary, with little to no data stream loss. It's more complex when combined with striping, parity and data-at-rest encryption, etc., etc.
There's no scenario where RAID is either classified as, or considered effective for, data backup.
I never trust cloud storage. Especially iCloud, which gives you no way to easily discern what's on the cloud only vs your mac or iphone.
Buying a large ssd to store backups of my phone or Mac is not a huge expense, and making the backups are fairly simple and quick using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner.
Screw the cloud. My data is safe, and I know exactly where it is and what it is.
Some people here have wrote about mirroring, is a Time Machine backup on an external drive a flawless solution, as long as the external hard drive is preserved???
As has also been said, mirroring is not a backup.
Time Machine has serious design flaws when backing up cloud data. It only backs up what is currently resident on the computer. Some (or perhaps most) of your cloud data such a GoogleDrive, iCloud etc. may well be in the cloud only. As I said before you need to use a backup solution which will "materialise" cloud only files - that is download cloud-only files so that the backup can be created. Some backup products will do this - Carbon Copy Cloner is currently the most capable/flexible for the backup of cloud data.
Currently I don't use the cloud for anything, so Time Machine is complete, correct? Thank you.
Complete: Yes, in the sense that TM, by default, will back up everything required for a full restore.
Complete: No, not every file on the Mac. TM does not backup macOS (the fixed part which is the same on every Mac), nor cache and log files.
A full restore, involves installing macOS and then recovering data, settings, etc. from TM using Migration Assistant.