4 ms·

What happens to your files when a cloud service dies?

43 points by ukdm 15y ago

AndrewDucker 15y ago
This is why I like Dropbox. If it dies then I have all of my files on my desktop and my laptop anyway.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Ditto , the only inconvenience is finding another backup/storage provider. This demonstrates the dangers of SOPA quite nicely. My worry is that in an attempt to create lock-in software vendors will try and tie storage and applications together so if you lose one you lose both. Let's imagine something like basecamp got taken down , that would be a major disaster for many businesses. They don't only lose the app but they lose all of the data.
  - ljf 15y ago
    Yup - they might tie it down so terribly, but I just have a dropbox accounts across a couple of computers - I have the same account on my personal PC, my office laptop and my crappy Jolicloud cheap linux laptop I use for surfing while watching TV. So as long as I turn each on once in a while I not only have a cloud back-up, I also have 3 'physical' ones. If one day Dropbox through the 'kill switch' - I'd just have to use one of the other devices without connecting to the internet first - as I don't like to leave machines running needlessly only one is ever on at a time. In a way I think it's good that Dropbox limits the amount I can store - it makes me focus on the files I /NEED/ to have for a long time, and makes me do the work of backing up the other lesser items - like photos (that I care about but aren't going to lose me £££ if I lose them).
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  Unless the Dropbox service sends a command to your Dropbox client to delete the files as part of its "death". If somebody other than the people who made and run Dropbox were responsible for the action of shutting it down, this might happen accidentally. Or if the service was hacked. It's still a good idea to have your own local backups.
  - antidaily 15y ago
    Yikes, I hadn't thought of that. Time to read the terms of service.
  - jessriedel 15y ago
    This is true for any service, cloud or not, that has permission to write to your hard drive. This ability has nothing to do with storage, and this risk is much, much less likely than simple bankruptcy or whatever.
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      You misunderstand my point. Not backing up files on your hard drive because they're in Dropbox is not safe. Dropbox has built in functionality to delete those files from your hard drive. If any one of your clients or your account is compromised, or the Dropbox service is hacked, these files could disappear. Hence why you need backups. Also, if the FBI starts pulling servers in a random order to shut Dropbox down, are you confident that wont cause Dropbox's systems to incorrectly send delete commands to your client just before the service disappears? If you are, you shouldn't be. Not after the "log in to any account without a password" issue of last year.
- radley 15y ago
  Dropbox reserves the right to delete files from your folders, including local ones. I had music files repeatedly removed from one of my folders.
  - xxbondsxx 15y ago
    From copyright infringement? That's the first I've heard of that. I thought the ToS implied privacy over filenames and such.
crcsmnky 15y ago
I guess the key here is, are you storing files or are you mirroring files? It would seem that the best possible solution is to run your own file storage service, but who has the time/desire to manage that? For a free product like Dropbox, I'm content (for now, at least) to make that tradeoff. I don't have to worry about clients or syncing or servers, etc. I just save my files on my computer and then they appear on my other devices. Perhaps the trick (to avoid data loss) is to backup locally as much as possible. I do backups once every 1-2 weeks depending on how often I'm nagged by Time Machine. That seems to be the only way to get the convenience of cloud storage while also not losing data if they go away.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  For people who don't have local backups, it's going to bite you one day. Here's how to set up free, hourly, incremental, encrypted backups with minimal effort. I do it on my laptop: https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Backups_for_Linux https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Bac...
steve8918 15y ago
My wife subscribed to an online, Quicken-like service a few years ago that went under, and then refused to allow her to download her information. After that, she realized how vulnerable her data was, since she has no clue who has her data, or what happened to it. I don't use Dropbox or any online file service for exactly this reason. I should really download all my gmail, but it's a major hassle having to take care of that, but I realize that's another major point of failure for me.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  Just use IMAP instead of or as well as the webmail interface. Configure your IMAP client to download all your mail locally. This is not a major hassle if you actually care about retaining access to your email.
  - steve8918 15y ago
    yes, I know I can use POP to download my mail, but the thing I've found is that it creates a huge, fragmented multi-gigabyte mail file in Thunderbird, which is annoying to have to take care of. But yes, I realize #firstworldproblems :)
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      A quick search for "imap to maildir sync" shows up several free apps for syncing between IMAP and Maildir. That way, each email would live in its own file. Might be more manageable.
      - sixothree 15y ago
        I believe windows live mail works this way as well.
      - simcop2387 15y ago
        If you've got linux, or probably even OSX or cygwin, fetchmail is almost trivial to setup to do a single run to do this. Read more about it at [1] [1] http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetchmail-and-procmail-for-maildir-style-storage-from-a-pop3-account/ http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetc...
aw3c2 15y ago
https://gist.github.com/1641705 https://gist.github.com/1641705
jimmy1234 15y ago
Use personal cloud services like Tonido with your public cloud services. That way you have a local copy as well.
driverdan 15y ago
As has been said time and time again, you should have at least 3 copies of every file you care about. One local, one local backup, and one remote backup. If you need to restore a file quickly or the remote backup goes down you have your local backup. If your house burns down you have your remote backup.
- fredley 15y ago
  The backup mantra I was taught: Files that don't exist in three places don't exist at all.
- omh 15y ago
  I would modify that to include one offline backup. If it's connected to other systems in an automated way then there's usually a way that it can be accidentally overwritten. Often there could be an event which cascades through all of your backups before you realise.
lmm 15y ago
The article's claim that AWS et al would do better under the circumstances seems dubious to say the least. Do they have an example of a more enterprise-oriented cloud service going under to generalize from?
51Cards 15y ago
Not to be a broken record for everyone else but I always keep a local copy (several) of all my data. I have a folder called "Store" and it is a large tree of everything I ever plan to keep long term. Parts of it are on various cloud services (mainly DropBox) depending on the type of access I need but everything resides locally somewhere in that tree structure. From letters I wrote in 1990 to photos (critical ones) to pretty much every line of code I've ever written. That folder is backed up across several devices by a nightly sync because I came perilously close to loosing it a couple years back when I got lax. In short, when it comes to my long term data I trust no one. :) Not even myself most of the time!
a9 15y ago
Mr Hand, I've been thinking. If I have access to the files. And you have access to the files. Then doesn't that make them "our files"? - Spiccoli

43 points by ukdm 15y ago

AndrewDucker 15y ago

This is why I like Dropbox. If it dies then I have all of my files on my desktop and my laptop anyway.

jiggy2011 15y ago
Ditto , the only inconvenience is finding another backup/storage provider. This demonstrates the dangers of SOPA quite nicely. My worry is that in an attempt to create lock-in software vendors will try and tie storage and applications together so if you lose one you lose both. Let's imagine something like basecamp got taken down , that would be a major disaster for many businesses. They don't only lose the app but they lose all of the data.
- ljf 15y ago
  Yup - they might tie it down so terribly, but I just have a dropbox accounts across a couple of computers - I have the same account on my personal PC, my office laptop and my crappy Jolicloud cheap linux laptop I use for surfing while watching TV. So as long as I turn each on once in a while I not only have a cloud back-up, I also have 3 'physical' ones. If one day Dropbox through the 'kill switch' - I'd just have to use one of the other devices without connecting to the internet first - as I don't like to leave machines running needlessly only one is ever on at a time. In a way I think it's good that Dropbox limits the amount I can store - it makes me focus on the files I /NEED/ to have for a long time, and makes me do the work of backing up the other lesser items - like photos (that I care about but aren't going to lose me £££ if I lose them).
mike-cardwell 15y ago
Unless the Dropbox service sends a command to your Dropbox client to delete the files as part of its "death". If somebody other than the people who made and run Dropbox were responsible for the action of shutting it down, this might happen accidentally. Or if the service was hacked. It's still a good idea to have your own local backups.
- antidaily 15y ago
  Yikes, I hadn't thought of that. Time to read the terms of service.
- jessriedel 15y ago
  This is true for any service, cloud or not, that has permission to write to your hard drive. This ability has nothing to do with storage, and this risk is much, much less likely than simple bankruptcy or whatever.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    You misunderstand my point. Not backing up files on your hard drive because they're in Dropbox is not safe. Dropbox has built in functionality to delete those files from your hard drive. If any one of your clients or your account is compromised, or the Dropbox service is hacked, these files could disappear. Hence why you need backups. Also, if the FBI starts pulling servers in a random order to shut Dropbox down, are you confident that wont cause Dropbox's systems to incorrectly send delete commands to your client just before the service disappears? If you are, you shouldn't be. Not after the "log in to any account without a password" issue of last year.
radley 15y ago
Dropbox reserves the right to delete files from your folders, including local ones. I had music files repeatedly removed from one of my folders.
- xxbondsxx 15y ago
  From copyright infringement? That's the first I've heard of that. I thought the ToS implied privacy over filenames and such.

crcsmnky 15y ago

I guess the key here is, are you storing files or are you mirroring files? It would seem that the best possible solution is to run your own file storage service, but who has the time/desire to manage that? For a free product like Dropbox, I'm content (for now, at least) to make that tradeoff. I don't have to worry about clients or syncing or servers, etc. I just save my files on my computer and then they appear on my other devices. Perhaps the trick (to avoid data loss) is to backup locally as much as possible. I do backups once every 1-2 weeks depending on how often I'm nagged by Time Machine. That seems to be the only way to get the convenience of cloud storage while also not losing data if they go away.

mike-cardwell 15y ago
For people who don't have local backups, it's going to bite you one day. Here's how to set up free, hourly, incremental, encrypted backups with minimal effort. I do it on my laptop: https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Backups_for_Linux https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Bac...

steve8918 15y ago

My wife subscribed to an online, Quicken-like service a few years ago that went under, and then refused to allow her to download her information. After that, she realized how vulnerable her data was, since she has no clue who has her data, or what happened to it. I don't use Dropbox or any online file service for exactly this reason. I should really download all my gmail, but it's a major hassle having to take care of that, but I realize that's another major point of failure for me.

mike-cardwell 15y ago
Just use IMAP instead of or as well as the webmail interface. Configure your IMAP client to download all your mail locally. This is not a major hassle if you actually care about retaining access to your email.
- steve8918 15y ago
  yes, I know I can use POP to download my mail, but the thing I've found is that it creates a huge, fragmented multi-gigabyte mail file in Thunderbird, which is annoying to have to take care of. But yes, I realize #firstworldproblems :)
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    A quick search for "imap to maildir sync" shows up several free apps for syncing between IMAP and Maildir. That way, each email would live in its own file. Might be more manageable.
    - sixothree 15y ago
      I believe windows live mail works this way as well.
    - simcop2387 15y ago
      If you've got linux, or probably even OSX or cygwin, fetchmail is almost trivial to setup to do a single run to do this. Read more about it at [1] [1] http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetchmail-and-procmail-for-maildir-style-storage-from-a-pop3-account/ http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetc...

aw3c2 15y ago

https://gist.github.com/1641705 https://gist.github.com/1641705

jimmy1234 15y ago

Use personal cloud services like Tonido with your public cloud services. That way you have a local copy as well.

driverdan 15y ago

As has been said time and time again, you should have at least 3 copies of every file you care about. One local, one local backup, and one remote backup. If you need to restore a file quickly or the remote backup goes down you have your local backup. If your house burns down you have your remote backup.

fredley 15y ago
The backup mantra I was taught: Files that don't exist in three places don't exist at all.
omh 15y ago
I would modify that to include one offline backup. If it's connected to other systems in an automated way then there's usually a way that it can be accidentally overwritten. Often there could be an event which cascades through all of your backups before you realise.

lmm 15y ago

The article's claim that AWS et al would do better under the circumstances seems dubious to say the least. Do they have an example of a more enterprise-oriented cloud service going under to generalize from?

51Cards 15y ago

Not to be a broken record for everyone else but I always keep a local copy (several) of all my data. I have a folder called "Store" and it is a large tree of everything I ever plan to keep long term. Parts of it are on various cloud services (mainly DropBox) depending on the type of access I need but everything resides locally somewhere in that tree structure. From letters I wrote in 1990 to photos (critical ones) to pretty much every line of code I've ever written. That folder is backed up across several devices by a nightly sync because I came perilously close to loosing it a couple years back when I got lax. In short, when it comes to my long term data I trust no one. :) Not even myself most of the time!

a9 15y ago

Mr Hand, I've been thinking. If I have access to the files. And you have access to the files. Then doesn't that make them "our files"? - Spiccoli