[dzek69]

That's the problem with Google Drive or any synced state clouds. People think about them as "I have it on my local computer and in the cloud, so I'm much safer".

A lot of bad things can happen that are even invisible to the user until they find out data is missing.

You save a file on a disk, something goes wrong with the cloud client, especially on bad connection and your file is either never synced (you will lose it on OS reinstall) or even deleted on your side.

Cloud provider has some issues, they restore the backup and things are synced back on your computer to their restored state.

Cloud provider started to dislike a file (their antivirus marked it), so they remove it from their side and it syncs to your computer. But that was a false positive (well, you could have your reasons to keep the infected file as well).

Ok, I know, at least for Google Drive their official client is pretty well written (I was using it for a long time), but bugs happen.

Conclusion? Make your own backup.

[dangus]

You’re making the wrong comparison, though. The average consumer never made a backup. Having your stuff on a cloud service is a major improvement to that MO.

[acdha]

> Conclusion? Make your own backup.

This is like saying it’s easier to eat healthy if you cook your own meals using fresh ingredients. We know that backups are best if you carefully and regularly make and test them but we also know that very few people diligently do so. There’s some room for automation there but you’re generally right back in the risk of bugs causing it to silently fail & someone busy noticing until it’s too late.

[Ferret7446]

Welcome to prepper mentality.

At the end of the day, everything is a risk and you have to decide your own risk tolerance.

Does the cloud have issues? Yes. But most people are far more likely to screw up their local backups than a cloud provider. Have you seen how an average person treats an external hard drive? It's like they don't know there are fragile glass disks inside.