World Safeguarding Day takes place on March 31. The opportunity to check if you are applying good practices in this area. For example, do not count that on the cloud to store your files and data.
Like every year, World Backup Day takes place on March 31. We don’t know if this deadline will encourage you to take the bull by the horns and (finally!) make that backup that you’re constantly putting off. You probably already know the best practices, if not applying them. They don’t really change from one year to the next.
For 2024, however, it is appropriate to make a public utility reminder: if you use the cloud in your backup routine (for example through Google Drive), be careful not to rely exclusively on it to secure your files and folders. Indeed, you certainly know the proverb which invites you not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Above all, if it is not your basket. The cloud is basically someone else’s shopping cart. At least, that’s true in the majority of cases: when Internet users use the cloud, they mainly use a service provider to store content (if it’s Drive, it belongs to Google). In fact, you place yourself at the mercy of a third party.
But things can sometimes go wrong: computer hacking, on-site incident that deletes your content or even closure of the account without warning. It is the mishap recounted at the end of February by an Internet user, when her access to Drive was closed: “ There is a high chance that I will lose hundreds of GB of photos, important data, etc. »
This incident is relatively rare (otherwise, Drive would not be used so widely, because the service would be too risky), but it is not impossible. This may be a legitimate account termination (there are situations in which Google may have to intervene) or an error. In either case, this remains a problem.
Use multiple baskets to store your eggs
This is not to say that you should absolutely give up Google Drive. If you use it to store files, it’s always better than making no arrangements at all. However, this world day can be a good opportunity to say to yourself that it is time to increase the number of baskets, to duplicate your eggs everywhere.
In this regard, there is a relatively famous strategy, called the 3-2-1 rule: it involves having three backups on two different media, one of which is far from you. For example, this can be a backup on your PC (on a hard drive or SSD), another on external media (USB stick, hard drive) and, finally, the last one in the cloud.
This approach significantly reduces the risk of losing data: even if your computer crashes, you will still have cloud and external support. If you lose your USB drive, you still have two options. And if Google Drive (or any cloud provider) shuts down without warning, you’re not in any more trouble.
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