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"This distinction is really without a difference." "In fact, if you're using the Dropbox desktop application, your files are backed up several times." "It's har
by DeepDuh 14y ago
"This distinction is really without a difference."
"In fact, if you're using the Dropbox desktop application, your files are backed up several times."
"It's hard to imagine a scenario where Dropbox could lose your files..."
Please stop. Right there. Stop believing some vendor marketing blindly (even if you do come to another conclusion later), stop reassuring other people who do so and stop calling a sync a backup. There is a very important distinction: Sync has mechanisms in place that are capable to touch the files on your backup. At least in dropbox' case these mechanisms are not completely separated from the initial backup mechanism of each version. I've had two almost catastrophical data losses with Dropbox until I was able to make that distinction. I've come to the conclusion that IT professionals should never ever treat a sync system as a backup system, and if you still think so please don't spread that advice to others.
- dchichkov 14y agoAlso, never ever treat any system as a backup, if you haven't tested that restore actually works. Do that, and a likelihood of loosing your files would get a lot smaller.
- pinneycolton 14y agoAgreed, and it helps to have 2 backups of all your data using different techniques/products. I run a local backup to cheap disk, network backup to remote location, and I suppose my remotely hosted svn is my third backup of most assets I really care about. Most of us here are developers. How many of our products are perfect? Always assume something will fail in a new and interesting way in the future. I'm not letting Dropbox off the hook - their product shouldn't do this - but you'll be happier if you treat backups with the same level of redundancy and planning as the rest of your infrastructure.
- Luyt 14y agoRemote backup is indeed very important. Imagine a fire in the server room. Where was the backup tape? Lying on top of the server? Oops...