Google calls Drive data loss “fixed,” locks forum threads saying otherwise
Google calls Drive data loss “fixed,” locks forum threads saying otherwise
The fix will sift through app data for cached files, but users say it doesn't work.
There is no data loss on Google Drive, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
This is why you do 3-2-1 backups. If you've ever worked for any company, you should know that eventually budgets will get cut, and the service will degrade until something breaks. It doesn't matter whether you're dealing with some family run small business, or the world's largest and most advanced tech company. No system deserves absolute trust, especially long term. I personally rotate 2 local, and 1 or 2 separate cloud providers, depending on how important the data is. Everything not shared is encrypted locally.
It's just their latest addition: Google Gaslight.
Google will be happy to explain the fix after you sit through 7 hours of unskippable Youtube ads. Then 7 more.
Get a NAS and start de-Googling yourself.
Hey, slightly better than Apple forums, where all their software is perfect and nothing is ever wrong
Hey, that's not true. Apple forums reps will ask you to factory reset everything twice, then refer to store for servicing and then ghost you.
When will people get it into their skulls that "cloud" == "someone else's computer you don't control".
The same day AROS gets a 50% computer OS market share. So, probably never.
They. Are. Lying.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Perhaps a "syncing" issue could remove files from your computer before uploading (that still doesn't explain the claims of missing web documents, though).
If you hold shift while clicking on the Drive system tray/menu bar icon, you'll get a special debug UI with an option to "Recover from backups."
Google locked the issue thread on the Drive Community Forums at 170 replies before it was clear the problem was solved.
Taking away the space to diagnose the issue and communicate fixes adds to the sense that Google is more interested in PR damage control than helping users.
It also doesn't allow people to reply to the "solution" post, so it's hard to evaluate the fix's efficacy since Google shut down the easiest avenues for user feedback and support.
Drive isn't just a consumer product, it's also aimed a businesses looking for terabytes of file storage, with paid tiers that can be priced into the stratosphere.
The original article contains 737 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A couple things:
You are responsible for making sure your data is backed up. If you only had it on Google drive, you fucked up. Their durability 99.99999 or whatever is fantastic, but you should always do your own due diligence and back up your files. Again, if your only copy of data is on one medium, even if it's Drive-- you've messed up.
I know thats semi- victim blaming(or straight up victim blaming) and that doesn't excuse Google for screwing up. But shit happens. If you had this somewhere else, this is just a minor annoyance. Restore and move on.
That said, Google has always sucked at customer service. That's probably because, with Google, you are often the product, so they don't really have a good culture of taking care of customer issues. They seemed to have bungled the comms on this.
But people being people, even if this is fixed there are always going to be people that swear it's not. Because they are either crazy, vengeful, or because they truly Believe a file should be there (even if they are simply misremembering/wrong). At some point a company has to move towards and nip the complaints in the bud because there is always a subset of people that will continue to bitch about it forever.
Google sets the default on things like the Drive for Desktop app to "streaming". It literally removes the original version of the file from your computer and puts it solely in the cloud. This is an advertised feature.
Google tells the customers not to worry. It is not the customer's fault for not knowing better when the companies that sell this shit tell them, routinely, "Just put it in the cloud, my man. We got this, s'all good bro."
Consumers should be better educated and more aware, it's true. It's not news that there's a lack of widespread tech literacy and awareness of best practices among average people.
But that's in part because companies don't tell them the truth. They mislead, lie, and omit. They seek to make the user trust them so they stay as customers. Google can't make such service that advertises itself as set it and forget it and not be held to blame when their customers find out their promises were shit.
But people being people, even if this is fixed there are always going to be people that swear it's not. Because they are either crazy, vengeful, or because they truly Believe a file should be there (even if they are simply misremembering/wrong). At some point a company has to move towards and nip the complaints in the bud because there is always a subset of people that will continue to bitch about it forever.
Ah yes, the classic presumption it's always user error and "vengeful complainers" right around the point where the dev gets tired of trying to help.
It's fixed because we said so!
