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Comment by tytso | Hacker News Reader

If files weren't completely deleted when the trash was emptied, then people would be kvetching about the horrible security implications and the only way to be sure was to keep files on the local disk so that when you emptied the trash, the files would be really gone....

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This is surely true. It's also true that real world data loss is worse than nonsense internet flaming.

I think the arguments can be dumb too, but the guy actually lost files here. And it's the kind of mistake I could see myself making pretty easily. In other contexts you protect against this with non-local backups (ironically, that's probably 90% of my usage of Drive), but there's no equivalent in the cloud world. It's a real issue that needs to be addressed, I think.

Yeah, there are many back-up equivalents https://www.cloudhq.net https://mybackupbox.com/ https://mover.io/product/backups

And And those who lost their file will blame the UI. I understand the frustration and how terrible the poster feels but this anecdotal argument is irrelevant to the actual safety or UI quality of Google Drive.

There will always be users who lose their data due to glitches, technical illiteracy, bad design etc. There are literally dozens, maybe hundreds of million Google Drive users.

The lesson that can be learned here is this: Your personal data management system should never have a single point of failure.

Disclaimer: I was a Googler sometime ago but wasn't anywhere near the Drive team.

Again though: the real issue I see here (not the giant UI rant or the Google is Evil nonsense) is that cloud-managed content like Google Docs cannot be backed up meaningfully. I think that's a real problem, and until it's fixed other people are going to be tripping over the same issues.

Yeah, I agree thats its not really intuitive but you can back up cloud managed content by converting it in various formats for export. https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/

I don't think the issue is emptying trash deletes the files. The issue is "moving" a file from Google Docs to the desktop, creates a link on the desktop, but moves the Google Docs file to the trash. You now have a link on your desktop to files in the trash. Why would anyone think this is a good thing, or what the user even wanted to do?

Ehhh, no. That's how dropbox works. If you delete a file it stays in the cloud for a month before it's fully deleted. You can use the web interface to do a proper delete, but the interface makes it clear what you are doing.

Not only that but dropbox keeps a few revisions for you if you happen to overwrite the file.

I've NEVER heard anyone complain about these features before.

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