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Another Dropbox horror story: My colleague lost most of his Dropbox folder last week, and wasn't able to recover everything. What happened: he had Dropbox sync

by edanm 14y ago

Another Dropbox horror story: My colleague lost most of his Dropbox folder last week, and wasn't able to recover everything. What happened: he had Dropbox synced to 2 computers, but one of them hadn't been used in a while. He turned on the old computer, and apparently, for some reason, Dropbox decided that the fact that many files weren't there was because they were deleted. Of course, the files weren't there because they hadn't been synced yet! So Dropbox decided, when the old computer was turned on, to delete 10s of thousands of files that were in my colleague's account. He reached out to them to help restore. It took several days (this happened on a weekend), but they did eventually restore it. Unfortunately, since it was difficult for them to pinpoint exactly what was the start of the event, some files were not recovered (I'm not sure the exact reason this was difficult to do). I love Dropbox [1], but this was a serious blow to how much I trust them with my files. [1] Just look at my comment history to see - I've raved about them several times on HN.

pc86 14y ago
While I feel for your colleague, I have to wonder why he didn't have a backup if these files were important enough to spend several days trying to get them back.[1] [1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html
- mikeash 14y ago
  People frequently confuse file syncing facilities with backup facilities, and I don't think Dropbox does much to clarify which one they are. Although, I thought Dropbox kept a history on each file going back a month.....
  - drivers99 14y ago
    Shoot. I've been thinking of dropbox as my backup. Now I wonder what would qualify as backup considering I want it to be automated and preferably not require me to write to media like DVDs. (Time Machine seems to be doing the trick on the Mac side, although... having all the backup media connected to the machine it's backing up means it's susceptible to simultaneous deletion, as well not being offsite means it is susceptible to theft/fire.) On the Windows side, I've been backing up just "important" files with dropbox, which has the benefit of being offsite and automated. I once used Mozy, but when I needed to do a restore they had problems generating a recovery image for me. I think they eventually got access to all the files after a few days. That wasn't reassuring.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      I use Backblaze. I have restored a few small files from them. I've never had to do the whole system, but I expect it to work well from what I've heard. Maybe I should actually test it....
      - barking 14y ago
        Absolutely you need to test your restores, regularly! I used to use Mozy but when I tried a trial restore it was taking forever and missing some files. Also it inserts these .PART files into your system that can almost double the size of the folders you're trying to back up. I looked at backblaze but it doesn't work with server computers. So I'm now trying crashplan. I'm really interested in the feature of crashplan which allows automated backups to other computers. Only problem is that I've not been able to get this to work so far. Backing up to the cloud is working well though. Also its very competitively priced. I've yet to try a restore.
        mikeash 14y ago
        One trouble with testing restores is that my likely avenue in the event of a real catastrophic failure that required a real restore would be to have them send me the data on a hard disk, to the tune of about $200. Not something I want to try just to make sure it works. I could try a download restore, but this would entail downloading a couple hundred GB of data, and wouldn't really exercise the same path I'd use in a real scenario. Any thoughts on the right way to approach it? Doing occasional small restores (usually using Backblaze as a sort of really slow Dropbox, restoring to a different computer when I need a file I forgot to share) at least gives me some peace of mind that the system works at all, but you're right that it's not quite rigorous. For servers, I've heard good things about Tarsnap, but never used it myself.
        barking 14y ago
        Any thoughts on the right way to approach it? No, that's a tough one, especially with a back up the size you're doing. Everytime you do a restore that's just confirmation that a particular backup was/was not sound. Wouldn't it be neat if the back up program had functionality that allowed you to restore a random sample of your files ( and maybe then compare these to the originals ) and give you a likelihood that your entire backup is sound? A sort of sampling quality control process.
  - ryguytilidie 14y ago
    What? Dropbox literally advertises themselves as a backup solution.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Yes, and we can always trust advertisements to be truthful.... If you accidentally delete a file in Dropbox on one computer, Dropbox will helpfully and immediately propagate that deletion to all of your other computers. It can be used for backup, but it's not very good at it.
      - ryguytilidie 14y ago
        It strikes me as unfair to say "sure the company advertises that they can perform function x, but trusting them to actually do that makes no sense." I don't have any objection to dropbox not being a good backup solution, but I do have an objection to them advertising themselves as a good backup solution when they are not.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Dropbox says "Your files are safe" and for most people operates as a better backup than they can do on their own (it's offsite for starters). Dropbox encourages this behavior: https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1 https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1 > You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.
wildmXranat 14y ago
So the silver lining is still that they came through and restored the data, aside from the fact that the old and presumably really old Dropbox client on it went haywire. Yes, Dropbox is free and no I don't expect them to have a file retention guarantee that safeguards my stuff against nuclear holocaust, but I feel for you friend. In this case, storing files is all that Dropbox does. If my harddrive decided to do that intermittently, I'd purchase a new drive and probably mirrored them. Why not come up with some sort of open-sync protocol where you could have your data mirrored by many Dropbox like services at once
- mikevm 14y ago
  Dropbox is not necessarily free, some people do pay for more storage.
robomartin 14y ago
Down-voted because I think that it is just dumb to have a Dropbox account and forgo local backup of the files on the service. Dropbox is not an extension of your mission-critical local storage and backup. My approach for Dropbox on both Windows and OSX is to have the Dropbox folder on a drive that will never see development work, even if that means creating a separate partition for it. In most cases the system drive works fine (you do have separate system and data drives on your machines, right?). This forces a COPY operation rather than a file MOVE if you drag-and-drop files into any Dropbox folder. Which means that everything in the Dropbox folder could be trashed tomorrow and nothing whatsoever would be lost. On Windows you can also do this by dragging files while holding down the RMB and on OSX while holding down the Option key. This, however, is fraught with issues because it is easy to forget and move something in or out of Dropbox accidentally. In addition to that, daily system and data backups to external media on EVERY SYSTEM in the office ensures that even if you took a sledge-hammer to any given machine all the data could be recovered to within a 24 hour boundary. So, no, this is NOT a "Dropbox horror story" as far as I am concerned. At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error" and at worst this is a sign of incompetence. Sorry, a little harsh there, but, as a student, I lost six months of heavy coding work once in college. That really hurt. And that was probably the best time and place to learn that lesson. That is all it took for me to be completely insane about having backups of backups on anything important. Now, may years later, you will not find any critical system in my office that is not backed-up at least once and usually twice. These days there's almost no excuse for loosing your work. Don't go around blaming Dropbox, not their problem. I am not associated with Dropbox in any way other than being just another user. FEATURE REQUEST: It would be very nice if Dropbox client software could have an option to auto-magically COPY files in and out of Dropbox rather than allowing any files to be moved. The above-mentioned hack works fine but it'd be nice to not have to use it. Also, I'd venture to guess that most Dropbox users don't do this, which opens them to unintended loss.
- jiayo 14y ago
  > At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error" and at worst this is a sign of incompetence. I'm not sure knowledge of an obscure Windows-specific drag and drop quirk should be a requirement for using Dropbox safely. > you do have separate system and data drives on your machines, right? I'm not sure use of a partition table editor should be a requirement for using Dropbox safely. Most people use the operating system that came installed on their PC as-is. > daily system and data backups to external media Dropbox makes the following claims on their website: "Your files are safe" "Even if you accidentally spill a latte on your laptop, have no fear! You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost." "Even if your computer has a meltdown, your stuff is always safe in Dropbox and can be restored in a snap. Dropbox is like a time machine that lets you undo mistakes and even undelete files you accidentally trash. " I think it's completely reasonable to expect Dropbox to be a reliable backup solution as-is.
gus_massa 14y ago
Is it possible that the unused machine has the wrong date? Perhaps that confused the operative system file dates and Dropbox. (I have an old machine that hardly use now that has problems with the motherboard battery and sometime it travels in time to a funny date like 2000 and all the security certificates are marked as wrong.)
- crazygringo 14y ago
  You'd think Dropbox on each computer would check the last time it had synced, using the time reported from a Dropbox server. I pray they wouldn't ever rely on users' own system clocks.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    In my experience Dropbox won't sync if the local system time is too far off. Makes no sense IMO, but that seems to be how it works.
    - arashf 14y ago
      that's just SSL cert validation :-)
      - CamperBob2 14y ago
        Seems questionable to use the local time for that. System time isn't exactly a trusted quantity, is it?
        arashf 14y ago
        hmmm, I think it's fairly common practice amongst similar software (i.e. firefox, chrome, etc.) to use system time as a signal that you may be connecting to a server that has an outdated SSL certificate. while it's not perfect, it's a good first order security precaution to take (in addition to verifying the CA) to ensure you are talking to who you think you are.
sean_lynch 14y ago
While I can't comment on this specific case, I do want to say there is a tremendous amount of rigor (and layers of protection) to ensure the end clients are resilient to misbehaving computers and do the right thing. For example, you shouldn't have to worry about the clock being accurate as it has no bearing on the final sync state. Just to dive in a bit for the HN crowd: We base the changes that should be applied to your Dropbox on whether the client has successfully synced the previous version of the file. The server doesn't allow the client to apply changes unless the client is fully up to date. And in the case of deletions, the desktop client is only permitted to issue deletes to files that have been successfully created on disk and then later deleted. We also have a proper support team to catch things that fall through the cracks, and if you have issues, you should reach out to them first (and as soon as you notice; their ability to fix things becomes harder the more changes you make to your account). Again, not commenting on the above issue, but I did want to point out that we take the integrity of your data very, very seriously.
- JohnHaugeland 14y ago
  Client rigor doesn't help with server failure this severe. The guy lost everything because a temporary team membership was revoked. And now you're coming back to talk about your rigor, and how you catch things that fall through the cracks. This really comes off, to me at least, like LinkedIn did when after their breach and it was revealed they weren't even salting passwords, they tried to brag about their security, as a way to step around owning up. I think you should consider this tone very carefully.
  - zaidf 14y ago
    Completely disagree. I found no problems with the tone here. Instead, you have an insider who shares a few implementation details to give us an idea about the depth at which they go to prevent data loss failures. I saw nothing in his post as "bragging". The guy lost everything because a temporary team membership was revoked. What would you like him to do, apologize profusely and robotically without knowing the details of this incident? Dropbox is a decent-sized organization and I am pretty sure they have guys already responsible for addressing specific issues like this. To expect every employee to know details of every issue seems unreasonable.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Someguyy 14y ago
I had this problem when I tried installing dropbox on my VPS. I wanted to use dropbox to get a small 1gb backup off of the server, as my puny ADSL would take days to do it, but for whatever reason, after it installed, I noticed on my current PC, 100's of "whatever.file has been deleted" notifications from my dropbox tray icon, and I was nearly dying, thankfully they have a restore option on their site, so I was able to "undelete" the files and save myself from losing so much data... Seems dropbox really does believe if a file isn't there, it's been deleted.
icametosaythis 14y ago
Sorry about your colleague's experience, but from my understanding of how Dropbox works even with old clients this shouldn't happen. Are you sure your friend hadn't deleted the contents of his Dropbox folder on that system and then turned the client back on later? That would definitely explain this. It'd be great to have your friend weigh in.
edanm 14y ago
Followup - I've read through a lot of this thread, and I'd like to follow up with a few thoughts. First of all, just to make it clear: Dropbox support has been GREAT. Though it took a few days because this happened on the weekend, Dropbox support did contact my colleague shortly after, and have made it clear that they will work hard to make sure everything that can be is restored. The problems with realising what is left to restore seem to be technical (again, I'm unsure of details). The support staff themselves have helped a lot. In addition, someone has reached out to me from Dropbox support because of this thread, to try and find the root cause of the problem - I hope we managed to help Dropbox find whatever it was that caused this to happen, so it doesn't happen to anyone else. Another misconception I saw, about "Dropbox is not a backup solution": My colleague and I both realize Dropbox is not for backup. The most important files were backed up, at least to some degree. Having said that, Dropbox is used by myself and many others as a semi-backup solution. My personal strategy is to backup the whole Dropbox folder to an external disk every few weeks, but rely on Dropbox for everything else. This is not a good backup solution, but realise that for most people, it's not "Dropbox vs. a real solution", it's "Dropbox vs. no solution at all". I'll close with the same message I give to most people - Dropbox is brilliant, most of the time. It's not a great backup solution, but it's better than what most people do. If you're not using anything else, Dropbox is a life-changer in terms of ease-of-accessing-your-files-anywhere, and feeling secure that everything is probably backed up.
- peterhost 14y ago
  +1. Totally agree on the "not a good backup solution". But we both (obviously) know the difference between redundancy and backup. My poor mum does not. So in the end, that's a problem, and i'm not bashing dropbox either (paid account and all, use it all the time) : their position as it stands, is a bit like the "nobody can presumably be ignorant of the law" article in french civil code (which was suppressed a few years ago), a position no commercial service whose customers are volatile should take for granted.
sinkercat 14y ago
I recently recycled my old notebook and took out the hard drive before recycling. Just a few days ago, I noticed videos getting added to the automatic camera uploads folder. These were not from my camera and strangely were of women undressing taken secretly outside windows. When I went to dropbox.com, it seemed that these files were added from the notebook I recycled. I reached out to Dropbox support but got no response yet.

by edanm 14y ago

pc86 14y ago

While I feel for your colleague, I have to wonder why he didn't have a backup if these files were important enough to spend several days trying to get them back.[1] [1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html

mikeash 14y ago
People frequently confuse file syncing facilities with backup facilities, and I don't think Dropbox does much to clarify which one they are. Although, I thought Dropbox kept a history on each file going back a month.....
- drivers99 14y ago
  Shoot. I've been thinking of dropbox as my backup. Now I wonder what would qualify as backup considering I want it to be automated and preferably not require me to write to media like DVDs. (Time Machine seems to be doing the trick on the Mac side, although... having all the backup media connected to the machine it's backing up means it's susceptible to simultaneous deletion, as well not being offsite means it is susceptible to theft/fire.) On the Windows side, I've been backing up just "important" files with dropbox, which has the benefit of being offsite and automated. I once used Mozy, but when I needed to do a restore they had problems generating a recovery image for me. I think they eventually got access to all the files after a few days. That wasn't reassuring.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I use Backblaze. I have restored a few small files from them. I've never had to do the whole system, but I expect it to work well from what I've heard. Maybe I should actually test it....
    - barking 14y ago
      Absolutely you need to test your restores, regularly! I used to use Mozy but when I tried a trial restore it was taking forever and missing some files. Also it inserts these .PART files into your system that can almost double the size of the folders you're trying to back up. I looked at backblaze but it doesn't work with server computers. So I'm now trying crashplan. I'm really interested in the feature of crashplan which allows automated backups to other computers. Only problem is that I've not been able to get this to work so far. Backing up to the cloud is working well though. Also its very competitively priced. I've yet to try a restore.
      - mikeash 14y ago
        One trouble with testing restores is that my likely avenue in the event of a real catastrophic failure that required a real restore would be to have them send me the data on a hard disk, to the tune of about $200. Not something I want to try just to make sure it works. I could try a download restore, but this would entail downloading a couple hundred GB of data, and wouldn't really exercise the same path I'd use in a real scenario. Any thoughts on the right way to approach it? Doing occasional small restores (usually using Backblaze as a sort of really slow Dropbox, restoring to a different computer when I need a file I forgot to share) at least gives me some peace of mind that the system works at all, but you're right that it's not quite rigorous. For servers, I've heard good things about Tarsnap, but never used it myself.
        barking 14y ago
        Any thoughts on the right way to approach it? No, that's a tough one, especially with a back up the size you're doing. Everytime you do a restore that's just confirmation that a particular backup was/was not sound. Wouldn't it be neat if the back up program had functionality that allowed you to restore a random sample of your files ( and maybe then compare these to the originals ) and give you a likelihood that your entire backup is sound? A sort of sampling quality control process.
- ryguytilidie 14y ago
  What? Dropbox literally advertises themselves as a backup solution.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Yes, and we can always trust advertisements to be truthful.... If you accidentally delete a file in Dropbox on one computer, Dropbox will helpfully and immediately propagate that deletion to all of your other computers. It can be used for backup, but it's not very good at it.
    - ryguytilidie 14y ago
      It strikes me as unfair to say "sure the company advertises that they can perform function x, but trusting them to actually do that makes no sense." I don't have any objection to dropbox not being a good backup solution, but I do have an objection to them advertising themselves as a good backup solution when they are not.
jonknee 14y ago
Dropbox says "Your files are safe" and for most people operates as a better backup than they can do on their own (it's offsite for starters). Dropbox encourages this behavior: https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1 https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1 > You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.

wildmXranat 14y ago

So the silver lining is still that they came through and restored the data, aside from the fact that the old and presumably really old Dropbox client on it went haywire. Yes, Dropbox is free and no I don't expect them to have a file retention guarantee that safeguards my stuff against nuclear holocaust, but I feel for you friend. In this case, storing files is all that Dropbox does. If my harddrive decided to do that intermittently, I'd purchase a new drive and probably mirrored them. Why not come up with some sort of open-sync protocol where you could have your data mirrored by many Dropbox like services at once

mikevm 14y ago
Dropbox is not necessarily free, some people do pay for more storage.

robomartin 14y ago

Down-voted because I think that it is just dumb to have a Dropbox account and forgo local backup of the files on the service. Dropbox is not an extension of your mission-critical local storage and backup. My approach for Dropbox on both Windows and OSX is to have the Dropbox folder on a drive that will never see development work, even if that means creating a separate partition for it. In most cases the system drive works fine (you do have separate system and data drives on your machines, right?). This forces a COPY operation rather than a file MOVE if you drag-and-drop files into any Dropbox folder. Which means that everything in the Dropbox folder could be trashed tomorrow and nothing whatsoever would be lost. On Windows you can also do this by dragging files while holding down the RMB and on OSX while holding down the Option key. This, however, is fraught with issues because it is easy to forget and move something in or out of Dropbox accidentally. In addition to that, daily system and data backups to external media on EVERY SYSTEM in the office ensures that even if you took a sledge-hammer to any given machine all the data could be recovered to within a 24 hour boundary. So, no, this is NOT a "Dropbox horror story" as far as I am concerned. At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error" and at worst this is a sign of incompetence. Sorry, a little harsh there, but, as a student, I lost six months of heavy coding work once in college. That really hurt. And that was probably the best time and place to learn that lesson. That is all it took for me to be completely insane about having backups of backups on anything important. Now, may years later, you will not find any critical system in my office that is not backed-up at least once and usually twice. These days there's almost no excuse for loosing your work. Don't go around blaming Dropbox, not their problem. I am not associated with Dropbox in any way other than being just another user. FEATURE REQUEST: It would be very nice if Dropbox client software could have an option to auto-magically COPY files in and out of Dropbox rather than allowing any files to be moved. The above-mentioned hack works fine but it'd be nice to not have to use it. Also, I'd venture to guess that most Dropbox users don't do this, which opens them to unintended loss.

jiayo 14y ago
> At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error" and at worst this is a sign of incompetence. I'm not sure knowledge of an obscure Windows-specific drag and drop quirk should be a requirement for using Dropbox safely. > you do have separate system and data drives on your machines, right? I'm not sure use of a partition table editor should be a requirement for using Dropbox safely. Most people use the operating system that came installed on their PC as-is. > daily system and data backups to external media Dropbox makes the following claims on their website: "Your files are safe" "Even if you accidentally spill a latte on your laptop, have no fear! You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost." "Even if your computer has a meltdown, your stuff is always safe in Dropbox and can be restored in a snap. Dropbox is like a time machine that lets you undo mistakes and even undelete files you accidentally trash. " I think it's completely reasonable to expect Dropbox to be a reliable backup solution as-is.

gus_massa 14y ago

Is it possible that the unused machine has the wrong date? Perhaps that confused the operative system file dates and Dropbox. (I have an old machine that hardly use now that has problems with the motherboard battery and sometime it travels in time to a funny date like 2000 and all the security certificates are marked as wrong.)

crazygringo 14y ago
You'd think Dropbox on each computer would check the last time it had synced, using the time reported from a Dropbox server. I pray they wouldn't ever rely on users' own system clocks.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  In my experience Dropbox won't sync if the local system time is too far off. Makes no sense IMO, but that seems to be how it works.
  - arashf 14y ago
    that's just SSL cert validation :-)
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      Seems questionable to use the local time for that. System time isn't exactly a trusted quantity, is it?
      - arashf 14y ago
        hmmm, I think it's fairly common practice amongst similar software (i.e. firefox, chrome, etc.) to use system time as a signal that you may be connecting to a server that has an outdated SSL certificate. while it's not perfect, it's a good first order security precaution to take (in addition to verifying the CA) to ensure you are talking to who you think you are.

sean_lynch 14y ago

While I can't comment on this specific case, I do want to say there is a tremendous amount of rigor (and layers of protection) to ensure the end clients are resilient to misbehaving computers and do the right thing. For example, you shouldn't have to worry about the clock being accurate as it has no bearing on the final sync state. Just to dive in a bit for the HN crowd: We base the changes that should be applied to your Dropbox on whether the client has successfully synced the previous version of the file. The server doesn't allow the client to apply changes unless the client is fully up to date. And in the case of deletions, the desktop client is only permitted to issue deletes to files that have been successfully created on disk and then later deleted. We also have a proper support team to catch things that fall through the cracks, and if you have issues, you should reach out to them first (and as soon as you notice; their ability to fix things becomes harder the more changes you make to your account). Again, not commenting on the above issue, but I did want to point out that we take the integrity of your data very, very seriously.

JohnHaugeland 14y ago
Client rigor doesn't help with server failure this severe. The guy lost everything because a temporary team membership was revoked. And now you're coming back to talk about your rigor, and how you catch things that fall through the cracks. This really comes off, to me at least, like LinkedIn did when after their breach and it was revealed they weren't even salting passwords, they tried to brag about their security, as a way to step around owning up. I think you should consider this tone very carefully.
- zaidf 14y ago
  Completely disagree. I found no problems with the tone here. Instead, you have an insider who shares a few implementation details to give us an idea about the depth at which they go to prevent data loss failures. I saw nothing in his post as "bragging". The guy lost everything because a temporary team membership was revoked. What would you like him to do, apologize profusely and robotically without knowing the details of this incident? Dropbox is a decent-sized organization and I am pretty sure they have guys already responsible for addressing specific issues like this. To expect every employee to know details of every issue seems unreasonable.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Someguyy 14y ago

I had this problem when I tried installing dropbox on my VPS. I wanted to use dropbox to get a small 1gb backup off of the server, as my puny ADSL would take days to do it, but for whatever reason, after it installed, I noticed on my current PC, 100's of "whatever.file has been deleted" notifications from my dropbox tray icon, and I was nearly dying, thankfully they have a restore option on their site, so I was able to "undelete" the files and save myself from losing so much data... Seems dropbox really does believe if a file isn't there, it's been deleted.

icametosaythis 14y ago

Sorry about your colleague's experience, but from my understanding of how Dropbox works even with old clients this shouldn't happen. Are you sure your friend hadn't deleted the contents of his Dropbox folder on that system and then turned the client back on later? That would definitely explain this. It'd be great to have your friend weigh in.

edanm 14y ago

Followup - I've read through a lot of this thread, and I'd like to follow up with a few thoughts. First of all, just to make it clear: Dropbox support has been GREAT. Though it took a few days because this happened on the weekend, Dropbox support did contact my colleague shortly after, and have made it clear that they will work hard to make sure everything that can be is restored. The problems with realising what is left to restore seem to be technical (again, I'm unsure of details). The support staff themselves have helped a lot. In addition, someone has reached out to me from Dropbox support because of this thread, to try and find the root cause of the problem - I hope we managed to help Dropbox find whatever it was that caused this to happen, so it doesn't happen to anyone else. Another misconception I saw, about "Dropbox is not a backup solution": My colleague and I both realize Dropbox is not for backup. The most important files were backed up, at least to some degree. Having said that, Dropbox is used by myself and many others as a semi-backup solution. My personal strategy is to backup the whole Dropbox folder to an external disk every few weeks, but rely on Dropbox for everything else. This is not a good backup solution, but realise that for most people, it's not "Dropbox vs. a real solution", it's "Dropbox vs. no solution at all". I'll close with the same message I give to most people - Dropbox is brilliant, most of the time. It's not a great backup solution, but it's better than what most people do. If you're not using anything else, Dropbox is a life-changer in terms of ease-of-accessing-your-files-anywhere, and feeling secure that everything is probably backed up.

peterhost 14y ago
+1. Totally agree on the "not a good backup solution". But we both (obviously) know the difference between redundancy and backup. My poor mum does not. So in the end, that's a problem, and i'm not bashing dropbox either (paid account and all, use it all the time) : their position as it stands, is a bit like the "nobody can presumably be ignorant of the law" article in french civil code (which was suppressed a few years ago), a position no commercial service whose customers are volatile should take for granted.

sinkercat 14y ago

I recently recycled my old notebook and took out the hard drive before recycling. Just a few days ago, I noticed videos getting added to the automatic camera uploads folder. These were not from my camera and strangely were of women undressing taken secretly outside windows. When I went to dropbox.com, it seemed that these files were added from the notebook I recycled. I reached out to Dropbox support but got no response yet.