eli5: Will I lose my files stored in google drive if a google data center gets bombed and it happens to be the one that stores my files?
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Your files are almost certainly not geographically isolated. Rather they are spread about across multiple datacenters in multiple physical locations just to avoid this very occurance.
Your files are not in just one data center and Google has multiple data centers around the world. One data center going offline doesn’t effect your files just because it happens to be the closest one to your location. Data continuity is a big deal.
Anything that’s stored in cloud is not just stored in one data center. It is replicated across different data centers just to mitigate the scenario you mentioned.
From Google Clouds FAQ
>Objects written to Cloud Storage must be redundantly stored in at least two different availability zones before the write is acknowledged as successful.
[https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/faq](https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/faq)
Google Drive runs on the same infrastructure as Google Cloud Storage GCS, which is multi-regional – redundant copies of your data is replicated to remove the risk of data loss (even within a single region, you wouldn’t be at risk if a single location failed, and each location is generally multiple physical datacenters).
GCS (like AWS S3) has something like ‘eleven nines’ durability – i.e. 99.999999999% reliable.
So, no. You’re good.
Another factor to consider is if you’re paying for the service. That’s more customer service/policy than technical capability, though.
For example, I had some videos uploaded to YouTube under my free account. I had upgraded to YouTube Premium for a few months, but then cancelled the service later. After cancelling the service, my videos I had uploaded during the Premium subscription were removed/no longer available. I doubt they were deleted from Google’s servers, but I no longer had access.
This same principle may apply to Google One but I cannot say for certain.
One of the benefits of cloud services like Google drive is that there are redundancies on all data, so your data is backed up in various servers around the world. Even if a data center in Virginia was bombed, the same data is in a data center in Denver, or Seattle, or Finland, or Belgium, etc.
The much bigger risk is that Google simply decides to cut your access at some point in the future. Especially likely because you presumably aren’t paying anything, and have no business relationship with them.
Probably not, as your data is duplicated and stored in multiple locations. Great for not losing your data, not so great for securing your property and privacy. Data breaches are a real challenge.
Yes, maybe, I don’t know, can you repeat the question?
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