Some Google Drive users are reporting that they’ve lost up to 6 or more months of data. I know I should feel sorry for these people. If I were a better person, I would but all I can do is laugh. Because, you know what? They’ve been warned repeatedly. I’ve been preaching for years that only fools commit their only copy of important data to a single source—especially one that they don’t control. Of course, only a few—enlightened and discerning—folks read Irreal but any knowledgeable person will tell you the same. The concept is not esoteric.
There are plenty of reasons not to trust Google with your data. They’ve demonstrated over and over again a willingness to delete accounts for political or other reasons that infract some aspect of their world view. But the issue here is larger and extends beyond Google.
Everyone knows, you’d think, that large companies should be proactive in protecting their data by having several copies available in case of disaster but the same concept applies to the individual user. As an example, consider university researchers. At any given moment they’re probably working on some project that involves a load of data, notes, and the write up of intermediate results. Now imagine that all that data suddenly disappeared. It could certainly be career threatening and in some fields—medical research, say—life threatening. The point is, even the “little guy” has to worry about data security.
Given all that, why would you entrust your important data to a single source? It’s easy and not very expensive to secure your data even if you use Google Drive or something like it to share information. I pay $120 a year for completely transparent backup (Backblaze). I don’t have to do anything: it just automatically backs up my files as they change. For less than $100 you can get a portable USB drive to keep (yet another) local copy of your important files. If you’re not doing something like this, you’re courting disaster. Don’t do that. Don’t end up reading about yourself in The Register.