

Google Drive was down - nsp
http://drive.google.com/?test

======
jaysonelliot
I don't fear the cloud, because I remember a world where most computers were
mainframes and minicomputers, and you had a terminal, not a personal computer.

The difference, of course, is that in the 1970s and '80s, one machine going
down affected dozens or maybe hundreds of people. Now, if Google Drive goes
down, millions of people are stranded until it comes back online.

I like the return to the terminal/server model. It's convenient and familiar.
That being said, monolithic services like Google Drive, iTunes Match, Dropbox,
EA's game servers, etc., should really be more distributed and resistant to
failure.

Could someone more knowledgable than myself explain how cloud services could
be less vulnerable to universal failures?

~~~
qompiler
Dropbox _is_ distributed and resistant to failure by design.

edit:

Not sure why I'm getting downvoted, maybe a link to a source will help.

"Everything in your Dropbox folder is always on your hard drive and merely
synced with our online service, so you have access to your files even if
you're offline. If you have multiple linked computers on your local area
network, we'll even sync from those computers rather than via the Dropbox
service whenever it can."

<https://www.dropbox.com/help/42/en>

~~~
cryptoz
> "Everything in your Dropbox folder is always on your hard drive and merely
> synced with our online service, so you have access to your files even if
> you're offline. If you have multiple linked computers on your local area
> network, we'll even sync from those computers rather than via the Dropbox
> service whenever it can."

There was a bug a couple months ago where Dropbox zero'd out some files, and
then synced the 0 byte files across all of your connected computers, thereby
destroying every linked Dropbox file that was affected.

There was that bug a few months ago where Dropbox left _all_ accounts open,
with no passwords, for four hours or something like that.

They are not resistant to failure by design.

~~~
athrun
IMO, the issues you are describing are not design errors. They were _bugs_. I
would argue that Dropbox's design is quite resistant to failure since it
allows for offline work and can even provide some P2P sync functionalities
when the backend servers are down.

~~~
hsmyers
Wishful thinking is not design...

------
nvr219
I feel like I should do something like this:

~/Dropbox/Google Drive/Skydrive/[ALL MY ACTUAL FILES HERE]

That way I'm syncing with three different providers and if two go down my data
is still available.

I pay for dropbox so I can fit all my ISOs in dropbox, but the high priority
docs (which total under 2gb) would be synced to all three (with the
confidential stuff in a TrueCrypt file of course).

~~~
jxf
That's an interesting approach, but I wonder if it isn't subject to
"thrashing" as soon as you start dealing with documents that are edited in
more than one place.

For instance, imagine that you have a laptop L and a desktop D. You edit
shared document X in your "actual files" folder on L. Version 2 of X is saved
on L, and you currently have version 1 of X on D.

1.) Dropbox happens to notice that X needs to be updated from v1 to v2 on D.
Dropbox updates X to v2.

2.) Skydrive has not yet been notified of the changes to X. It changes X back
to v1 for you on D.

3.) Dropbox notices that X has been modified on D. It sees that the new v1 X
has an updated timestamp, so it assumes that this is a better version of X.
Dropbox saves this as v3 (which is identical to the original v1).

4.) Dropbox pushes the v3 change to L, erasing your v2 work. Oops!

Basically, unless every synchronization service follows precisely the same
protocol, you're gonna have a bad time.

~~~
nvr219
This is beginning to sound like the script to Primer. Ugh. I'd have to somehow
force skydrive to do its sync before google, before dropbox.

------
bargl
Seriously? Google experiences such infrequent outages that it really is a
reasonable alternative to most normal home storage solutions.

I'd be interested to see an aggregation of data on down time for a PC, for the
average user, due to viruses, malfunctioning hardware, broken HDD, stolen PCs,
etc. VS common issues with Google drive and chromebook combination: stolen
credentials, ISP outages and downtime.

This is a good time to go check out other services and see if you like them
better than Drive, but let's keep put the pitchforks and tar away for right
now.

And yes I realize this can severely affect a good subset of users, and disrupt
their workflow, but let's really analyze the difference rather than just
giving into our gut reactions eh?

------
josephagoss
I tried to like Google Drive, It was half the price of Dropbox and being a
poor student I really needed the alternative.

After a month I closed Drive down and went entirely over to Dropbox, it wasn't
just one thing but many many little things that just showed how bad Google can
be at desktop software. You get this feeling they hate the desktop and want it
all to be online.

Dropbox is so easy to use and does everything very well. I really wish it was
a little cheaper though.

~~~
walls
You mean you don't love having to manually 'retry all' on 'unsyncable files'
every day?

~~~
josephagoss
Haha wow! Now your bringing back memories! I never understood this, Dropbox
never had this issue and I don't think dropbox even has a "retry" dialog!

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charliechalk
google have just updated apps status:
[http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1...](http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1363618626403)

Apparently should be back up in 30 - 60 min

~~~
denzil_correa

        3/18/13 7:47 PM
        We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive. We will provide more information shortly.
    

This is what it says. Where can you see the 30-60 minute recovery time frame?

------
nickpresta
It just seems the list page is slow. I can open up documents directly and they
load instantly as normal.

 _shrug_

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niggler
What are the alternatives to google drive, and how do they compare?

~~~
TheAnimus
SkyDrive and DropBox are the two that come to mind.

SkyDrive is quite good offering from Microsoft, I've not had downtime yet, but
I just don't like the idea they scan my photographs for the old nudies! (Which
apparently violate their TOS).

DropBox is for some reason a darling with some people on the internet, I think
because they love Python. However they had a security oopsie, which I don't
care how short it was for, wasn't adiquately explained to my liking as to how
such a mistake could be made.

~~~
psbp
Skydrive, and most of Microsoft's online services, went down for hours last
week.

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pgrote
Very slow, but seems to be working for me. Ocassional "The server encountered
an error. Please try again later" and Go Online error messages.

~~~
marco-fiset
Same for me.

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rpncreator
I honestly wonder how much this is costing them:

<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html>

How do they calculate "Monthly Uptime Percentage"?

------
FigBug
I didn't notice, since Google Drive pretty much always says "Unable to
connect" for me. If I restart it, it'll stay connected for a while and then go
back to "unable to connect" Anybody else have this issue?

~~~
alenlpeacock
Yes, that is my experience too. But I don't care; google drive is for google
docs, and google docs aren't useful at all on my desktop. I'm not sure why I
even run the gdrive desktop app.

~~~
Evbn
Yeah, the sync features are just there are a bare minimum checklist
requirement. Drive was delayed for over five years for one single reason:
because the VP in charge believed that storing files on a local machine was
antithetical to Google's entire vision of how computing should work.

(Source: In the Plex,by Steven Levy, interviews)

------
scrapcode
Drive isn't down for me. Just a bit slow.

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cwhy
It is down just after I uploaded a file... Is it related to the news of the
shut down by the beloved Reader..?

------
kattuviriyan
Any good Google Drive x Dropbox Sync Tools available? I guess, I need one such
tool.

------
jwillgoesfast
obviously this is the best solution: <http://www.dilbertfiles.com>

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piyush_soni
Works for me (I'm in US if that matters).

------
mydpy
I'm pretty sure I broke it.

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mergy
Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays.

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cooldeal
This is one of the dangers of the Chromebooks' reliance on Google Drive and
paltry local storage. Having 1TB of cloud storage is not very useful when it's
inaccessible.

~~~
Achshar
Shit happens. It was also possible if all your data was on the hard drive. And
Google drive has an offline version of the app, so server downtimes limit the
usage but don't make it completely useless. And if my hard drive breaks, it's
not like a bunch of very well paid engineers are working relentlessly to bring
my hard drive back as quickly as possible. But they are in case of a services
like dropbox or drive. And not to mention that the whole backup work is being
taken care of.

~~~
jgroome
Sorry, but you can't seriously compare uptime of cloud-based services to hard-
disk failure.

I've been using computers since I was 12, so about 17 years, and in that time
I've had two hard disks break on me. I'm sure you're going to say you've had a
lot more, but if your hard disks are going out of action at a rate even near
to how often Google's core services drop out, well, you're doing something
wrong.

"Shit happens" is never a valid excuse, even for a service provided at no cost
to the user.

~~~
Achshar
It's not just hard drive failure. Account stolen laptops, out of charge
laptops and convenience of accessing any file anywhere anytime (tablet, phone
or PC).

------
cooldeal
Interesting this post is getting flagged off the front page.

<http://hnrankings.info/5394475/>

If this was news about Skydrive being down, this post would be #1 for days.

The flag abuse by HN moderators with good karma continues...

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shrikant
I believe this is because of Reddit.

Some chap (maybe an HTC employee?) posted on the /r/Android subreddit that he
was giving away a couple of HTC smartphones[1], and all one had to do to enter
the giveaway way fill out their Reddit username in the linked Google
Spreadsheet.

This post has now been deleted from the front page as well as the subreddit --
I'm not sure why.

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_have_some_more_htcs_to_give_you/)

~~~
pgrote
Interesting. It appears the contest was held previously and it brought down
Drive then.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_have_some_more_htcs_to_give_you/c8xrpzr)

~~~
damniatx
This can't be the issue, even if it's get 10k submission per seconds, it can't
make the system like Google Drive down. come on. that just ridiculous.

~~~
sergiosgc
About as ridiculous as shutting down Jabber federation on GTalk because that
was the only measure Google could take to limit spammy invites.

Google has come down a lot from their pedestal last week. In my book, this
Jabber federation issue put them on par with "two teenagers in a garage".

So, ridiculous as it may be, today I believe one spreadsheet can bring GDrive
down. Last week I had a different opinion.

~~~
Evbn
They shut down federated invitations, not federated conversations, I thought?

