

DropBox client defected and lost my files - carbomer
http://omarabid.com/dropbox-lost-my-files-for-good/?hn

======
sambeau
Surely an alternative and equally plausible story here is that the files were
corrupted locally and Dropbox gave a 60-day window for them to be recovered.

However, having spent some time with people debugging a WebDAV client I
suspect that this may be a remnant of Excel doing one of those complicated
series of saving temporary and 0-byte files that MS & Adobe insist on doing.
Perhaps it somehow hit a Dropbox sync at just the wrong moment and the 0-byte
file was saved for posterity. This of-course would be a _DropBox_ problem, but
tricky time-centric syncing bugs like that are hellish to find and fix. The
fact we don't see more is a testament to the brilliance of DropBox.

~~~
csomar
If you read the article carefully, not only the Excel file is affected. Also,
the files are synced from the CentOs machine.

------
Osmium
It's fairly unreasonable to expect DropBox to keep historical versions of your
files for some arbitrary amount of time when you're not paying for the
service...

~~~
onli
On the other hand, it is not at all unreasonable to expect Dropbox to not sync
0-byte-files (if there was content in it before), which could also lead to the
expectation that in those cases Dropbox would store an additional backup/send
a message.

------
rwbt
I think its unfair to blame Dropbox that they never mentioned 'Packrat'. Its
clearly noted in their pricing page <https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade>

Also, one should always periodically backup their files, so in the event of
data corruption its possible to recover them. Corruption might happen
elsewhere, not only defective dropbox client.

Never assume your data will be safe. There are always a million things that
might go wrong. Just be prepared.

------
senko
I recently accidentally removed my Dropbox folder and the client assumed I
wanted to delete everything. I managed to pause it after only a couple dozen
files were lost.

Navigating through the folders in Dropbox and figuring out which files i want
to undelete was not at all obvious, since I didn't want to undelete anything
not deleted in that accident. Having a simple "undo" button next to the event
that nicely said "X files deleted" would've been a big time saver.

Packrat is nice, but if I have to manually fish out the important stuff
instead of having an easy restore functionality, it's not much of a backup
solution.

------
csomar
Author here: I'm not using DropBox for backups. I have a relatively slow
connection to do that. I'm using DropBox for files that I need to be available
on different computers/tablets...

I'm not blaming DropBox for not keeping an unlimited history (it's obviously
my fault), I just believe that they should have taken the Client bug more
seriously.

Someone else appearantly had this issue: [http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-
bug-can-permanently-lose-yo...](http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can-
permanently-lose-your-files)

------
evertonfuller
Should have paid for Packrat then? They're not a charity.

------
itry
Interesting. 2013 and backup is still hard.

What I do: I have one partition for all my important stuff. I rdiff-backup it
regularely to different devices like harddisks, usb-sticks and servers all
around the globe. Feels pretty safe to me. Of course, if rdiff-backup has a
bug or im using it wrongly, im toast.

How do you guys do backups?

~~~
nknighthb
> _2013 and backup is still hard._

It really isn't.

OS X actively invites you to turn an external HDD into a Time Machine backup
target with one click.

Windows 7 grew a less-prominent backup utility that works almost as well. I
assume it or something like it remains in 8.

Linux has a plethora of attempts at similar solutions but none has become a de
facto standard. I just use duplicity on my servers.

~~~
itry
> OS X actively invites you to turn an external HDD into a Time Machine backup
> target with one click.

They dont offer it as a web service? Making people dabble with hardware sounds
archaic.

~~~
nknighthb
Is this sarcasm, or are you truly expecting people to keep their only backups
of critical documents on third-party servers?

Not to mention the time and difficulty of a multi-hundred-gigabyte full system
restore at typical American internet speed/reliability.

------
IronSean
Rule number one: back up things you don't want to lose.

------
jmadsen
Why is this the top story in my HN feed at the moment?

~~~
quarterto
Because people upvoted it.

------
nknighthb
> _Turns out DropBox saves a history of all deleted and earlier versions of
> files for 30 days only._

I've found most people aren't even aware DropBox has this functionality at
all. This is the first I've encountered someone who apparently knows about it,
but does not know its limit.

Packrat, by the way, is available directly on the "Upgrade to Pro" page, and I
think it has been the entire time it has existed.

> _OTHER DEVICES AS BACKUP_

> _That didn't help either. The other devices were already synced with this
> defected version._

Then that's not a backup, and never was.

