Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
Ok so… this is… bad? Yes, BAD. Over the past few weeks many people are reporting that Google Drive has, what’s the word… un-existed, their files. This is extremely concerning because for many people cloud storage is their only backup (or, since services like S3 and Drive have gone out of their way to insist on their basic invulnerability to data loss, their only file storage area.)
The problem seems to be that files stop existing, Google doesn’t know why, and Google Drive’s file recovery mechanism only applies to files that are deleted by the user. This is, of course, unintentionally hilarious. In order to be covered by a recovery mechanism, you need to delete a file. If it just disappears, it’s as though it never existed. How very Keyser Soze.
I haven’t gotten an email back from Alanis about this yet, but i’m pretty sure THAT is ironic. This is an important reminder that there is no such thing as a data storage location that is 100% safe, be it cloud-based, datacenter-based, or even magnetic tapes stored under your desk at your home office. I’m looking at you, too-large-a-number-of-customers-for-me-to-be-comfortable-with.