Show me a business that is willing to offer you that guarantee and I'll show you a business that is out of business.

What if there's a fire? Or malicious destruction? Or massive hardware failure?

Anyhow, the only people who would down-vote some of the comments I am making are those who have never suffered the pain and agony of data loss. If you've ever been in those shoes you know, without an iota of doubt, that what I am saying is 100% on point.

There's nothing wrong with Dropbox. The problem is in how naively people are choosing to use the service.

Could they be better? Of course. Would I still have my own redundant backups and recommend that Dropbox users do the same and fully understand the service. Absolutely!

Personal responsibility is a bitch. It's much easier to blame someone else. Guess what? Blaming someone else for your failings will not make things right or bring back your data.

We're 100% in agreement on that. But since you can never be sure that the software that you're using is bug free (and in the case of dropbox there is now at least one more datapoint that confirms that their software contained at least one bug) you have to more or less count on losing all your data.

Dropbox messaging is of course not going to highlight the fact that their software may contain bugs, it simply isn't in their best interest (and none of their competitors do so either).

Maybe they have a section to that effect in their fine print but even if they don't on hacker news we really should all know better. Unless there is someone here that only writes bug free software... In that case please send me your resume.

I think that's mostly a format issue, the underlying message is solid.

> Everyone knows that multiple backups are important.

My experience and your experience are apparently not the same in this respect. And I look at a lot of companies every year. The number of times the question 'do you do trial restores of your back-ups' is answered with either 'what backups' or 'no' is way larger than what you'd expect.

And those are companies, not individuals where I'd expect the situation to be much worse.

> If I'd had multiple backups, and Dropbox had deleted items that I hadn't asked it to delete, I'd still be able to comment about that because data deletion is serious business.

Yes, absolutely it definitely is. Dropbox dropped the ball here. The problem is that you can pretty much expect them to drop the ball on occasion, no large service has every been 100% without data loss. Amazon, google, dropbox, microsoft, they've all lost some customer data at some point.

It's the rule, not the exception. When you're dealing with data data loss is the thing you're working hard to prevent but it'll never be 100% perfect. It can't be. There will always be edge cases and the simpler you try to make it on the outside the more complex the actual software becomes. Complexity leads to bugs, bugs (can) lead to data loss.

> This thread isn't (at least, shouldn't) be about data being deleted; it's about unpredictable behaviour from software.

All software that I'm aware of contains bugs. The discipline and experience required to write bug-free software is universally claimed to be present in one industry only: aerospace/aviation. And even there they have bugs, just fewer of them at massive expense. Bugs are the norm, not the exception.

> When that unpredictable behaviour includes deleting data that that's a valid serious concern even if everyone has great backup strategy.

Yes, it is a valid concern. And the way to mitigate that concern is by looking it in the eye and saying 'I don't trust software'. Any software. Including dropbox.