And less than 24 hours later, here we are.
And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse.
I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guarantee that my cherished photos and videos will be here in 30 years"
Second to that is getting locked out of my Gmail. I'd consider that more irritating than losing my wallet.
I'm kinda hoping for some open-source solution to emerge based on IPFS or the like, which would let me easily control replication of my photos & vids over a few local disks (probably via some local NAS machine[s]), and some online paid pinning service.
There are apparently some efforts towards something like that in the IPFS community [1][2], but no clear winner yet I think, or at least especially no good UI/UX for this yet.
[1]: https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47
[2]: https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-cluster/issues/157
edit: some random service/startup which I just googled up which apparently tries to fit into this area, linking here to hopefully match them with potentially interested users, and thus maybe help them reach critical mass: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/846e64/photo_backup_a...
What I want is a holistic solution. "I have money and I have data that I want taken care of. I don't want to do much work and I don't want to think about it more than once a year or two."
The Google Drive files are exported as you would expect and you can just copy them into some other sync folder as is. Takeout transforms any Google Docs and Sheets into Word and Excel formats (configurable), so you don't end up with links into your disabled Google account (contrary to how their Backup and Sync client works).
Emails are exported as mbox files, calendars in ics format. It's pretty easy to import everything using widely available email and calendar clients. It's also pretty easy to put it all back into another Google account, but you're right, it's not as simple as importing the entire takeout zip file in one piece.
What I haven't tried is what happens to files that were shared with you. I would expect that they don't get exported because it's someone else's data after all.
I think if the purpose is to let you move all your data to a different provider and avoid any lock-in, then Google Takeout is an honest and practical solution.
It's clearly not meant as a routine backup solution though.
Despite being able to supply google with the creation date (they ask), the fact that my name/birthday is the same on both accounts, I’ve attached the same visa to both google accounts, I’ve logged on to them from the same ips, and the fact that it’s forwarding everything to me, I still haven’t been able to get it unlocked.
I’m not sure I’ve really spoken to anything but an automated process either.
It’s entirely my fault for losing the two-factor restoration keys, but it’s been a little frightening to realize that you can’t just contact google and have them help you.
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I was in the same situation, having the correct logon credentials for my account, but the system refused to believe it's me and asked for proof, but I forgot the security answer.
Ended up filing a bogus copyright complaint, knowing they can't handle that automatically.
I told them there was a copyright violation and proof was in my locked account (a picture of a seven-legged spider...).
They unlocked the account long enough for me to move my accounts elsewhere.
Fuck Google.
I find both options to be not ideal, since I'd like a simple, secure and safe way of storing my pictures. But that's the way the market is.
That's very much missing the point. The non-technical option is inside that post: Backblaze. Do that twice, the second time with crashplan or carbonite, and you can keep your files safe without any trouble.
The real problem is that it can only protect the files on your computer. If you have data that's fed directly to google, there's no simple software to get it back out to where it can be backed up.
Plenty of uncomfortable chances for failure, but a few heaped handfuls of error reporting would probably be mitigation enough.
Getting the initial clone done might be a little fun, you might need to actually download the Drive folder structure to somewhere spacious so you don't run into transfer ratelimiting for the initial upload.
Anyways, print recovery keys for your account, use 2FA with yubikey or other U2F provider.
If I were to get banned from Google, I'd still have my folder as a backup which I can then upload to Dropbox or whatever alternative.
If I were to lose my folder (My hard drive went bust!) my folder is one resync away.
What is the problem you have with photos, and videos in that sense?
Or are you talking about the Free "Google Photo" thing for lower resolution images?
http://www.ironmountain.com/digital-transformation/iron-clou...
Email is the single most important thing, and I can't understand why people use Google for that in 2018.
Very few people think that every single shot will be meaningful in 30 years. But it's hard to know what will be and won't be.
So, follow the backup instructions very very very carefully people!
switch to apple
Anyone using a free service anywhere provided by anyone should be worried.
I pay to use gmail and their service is incredible. Whether it's been support chat, phone calls, etc... I've always received very prompt support from Google.
Google seems to just be an exceptionally bad actor - I’ve been starting to move away from dependence on them as a result, as they’ve proven to me that I cannot rely on them to be honest/transparent in the most important ways.
Talking costs money, a lot of money, far more than computers.
It seems that Google One will have paid support, so your problem is solved!
Have you looked at moving off gmail?
I can already see the followup HN news: "Google attacking developers on Chrome Web Store and breaking free web!"
To the author: Thanks for the extension. I'm a happy user on FF for a long time.
The "Google search link fix" extension by Wladimir Palant has existed for many years. (Source: I use it in Firefox.)
one of the worse parts about this is that they auto update without you knowing. So an extension might've been safe when you first installed it then a month later its infested.
All in all, this is nothing new and it seems to be a lot of huff about a simple mistake.