Dropbox Glitch Perfect Reason Why Backups Should Be Local
Dropbox acknowledged on Monday that an issue with its Selective Sync feature has deleted the files of some users. The company is currently sending out an email explaining what happened. As compensation, Dropbox is providing these customers with one year of Dropbox Pro for free.
"We've fixed the Selective Sync issue that affected a small number of users and reached out to them to help restore their files," a spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Issues like this aren't acceptable at Dropbox, and we've implemented additional testing to prevent this from happening again."
Selective Sync is a Dropbox feature that allows users to select a specific file or folder to be mirrored on the user's local hard drive. For instance, perhaps users take photos on their smartphones, and those images are automatically uploaded to Dropbox. The user may choose not to mirror those images on a local hard drive with limited storage capacity.
According to Dropbox, the file deletion occurred when the desktop application was shut down or restarted while the user was applying Active Sync settings. The company's email said that the team worked hard to restore those files, indicating that many may not have been rescued from the dark clutches of the trash can.
The question here is this: should consumers depend on cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive? As this example indicates, one small glitch can cause users to lose valuable files such as photos, documents and so on. Sure, cloud storage is convenient when users want to access files from different devices in different locations, but there may be other ways of doing so without having to depend on third-party cloud solutions.
For instance, Pogoplug has a networking device that will allow users to access their files from anywhere. Just hook up several hard drives, and you can access them from a mobile device's app or a web interface on a laptop. There are also a number of routers that allow users to plug in a hard drive via a USB port and access its files from anywhere.
Of course, this view isn't meant to discourage customers from using cloud services. However, it may be wise to backup the cloud backup using a portable HDD or SSD, toss it into a fire-proof safe, and then refresh the backup when needed.
Follow Kevin Parrish @exfileme. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
Let that sink in for a second. =)
If you can get past security implications of putting your files into cloud backup services, then I believe it's a viable and smart way to backup files. There are services out there that give you UNLIMITED storage space for very reasonable costs.
Just like I don't trust my local hard drive from failing, I wouldn't never trust the cloud from failing as well. But chances are that my local copy will not fail at the same time my could copy fails. And if you add a third backup medium, the chances of losing all three at the same time becomes even smaller.
Cloud backup data loss should help identify single points of failure in your backup schema, but it's definitely not a "perfect reason why backups should be local".
My dropbox folder is backed up on a daily basis to a separate harddrive.
All real backups should be done locally to a separate drive or to an outside source that specializes in data backup (even then, most people's upspeed prevents them from doing any large backups outside of their WAN.
SSD for backup? That is really bad advice. SSDs keep data for 6 months only after unpluged from power. Take care with your advices...
Three different ways, with one of those ways being off-site in another region. Unless one of your backups is 100+ miles away, a local natural disaster could destroy all of your copies.
RAID isn't going to solve these problems. It isn't meant to. Multi-region cloud storage has a place and that is for maximum resiliency. Don't trust all your data to one service necessarily, and don't be lax with your security, but for individuals services like Dropbox are the only viable solution.
Yes, one of my critical backups is in another state, plus on a few servers.
As time went on, I subscribed to DropBox Pro and took advantage of the automatic upload feature, as well as automatic sync with my Asus Transformer Pro and Barne & Noble Nook. But never have I looked upon those auto upload/auto syncy features as a "backup". I've always continued copying my pictures manually from DropBox to a hard drive on my main computer at home, and over time I've added two additional hard drives on other computers as an additional safety measure.
In short, if DrobBox suddenly went bankrupt and disappeared from the net forever, and I simultaneously lost my phone and had my tablets stolen out of my luggage at the airport, I'd STILL have 3 copies of everything on 3 different home computers. In my opinion, anyone who doesn't follow a similar procedure is just asking for trouble. Take my advice - storage is cheap. Don't depend on a 3rd party to store files for you, no matter how convenient it sounds at the time. Eventually, something will happen and you will come to regret it.
I personally don't trust cloud backup / sync to get it 100% right all the time. For personal stuff probably not too big of a deal long as you are backing it up locally yourself on a regular basis. But for Enterprise nope, we do it ourselves.