You can still use it as a target for a more sophisticated backup solution though, like borg. Borg handles the versioning, integrity, and encryption, so online backup can just be used as dumb storage location. If the online backup deletes your data or locks you out, just use your other copies to recreate the backup into another dumb online storage. In this way, your online backup target doesn't have to be very reliable, as long as it doesn't fail at the exact same time as your other backups.
Anything that syncs doesn’t actually backup. It’s just a mirror. If something happens to one of them, that deletion/corruption might get synced to the other one before you can recover it.
Online backup is a different and valid thing, it’s an actual static preservation of a version of the files at some point in time that isn’t automatically edited or removed based on the contents of another device.
CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca 1 day ago
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you’re going to go through all that trouble, you’re not going to target Google Drive outside of a proof of concept, just remove it from your workflow and make life way less complicated.
Buy inexpensive server access in a neutral country and apply that logic to it. So much more freedom & privacy, so much more reliability.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Syncing with versioning is a solid backup of each state of a file and any changes it undergoes. Depending on how long you have it set to keep those changes, it can be an even better backup than a once daily backup. If you get hit with a deletion or corruption, just reload the previous version that isn’t deleted or corrupted.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You’re conflating syncing with backing up, and unfortunately that very thing is what confuses so many not-tech savvy people into thinking cloud syncing is the same as an actual recoverable backup.
If you found a service that does actual hard backups with versioning and still makes accessing those fils as easy as cloud storage, awesome! Post links to that.
That is a valid offsite backup solution. Google Drive is not.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Google Drive and OneDrive offer versioning as far as I can tell.
Google drive does up to 100 versions or within 30 days.
If you are looking for longer term backups of versions, you will need to hard backup at least once every 30 days, which can also be stored on Google Drive.
biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone 1 day ago
I feel like you understand the text book but didn’t know the application.
rekabis@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
Every syncing service I know of offers versioning. Some offer a high degree of versioning customization (retention, etc.) with their paid tiers, making said sync indistinguishable from a hot backup.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
That doesn’t make syncing the same as backing up, that’s an actual backup service with a sync feature added to it.
By all means, share links to such services if you have any.