“All our files are in OneDrive, so we are backed up.”
We hear this regularly from businesses in Cape Town. It feels logical – your files are in the cloud, stored on Microsoft’s or Google’s servers, so they must be safe. If your laptop gets stolen or your hard drive fails, the files are still there online.
That part is true. But syncing is not backup. And the difference only becomes obvious when something goes wrong in a way that syncing was never designed to handle.
What syncing actually does
When you save a file to OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, the service copies that file to the cloud and keeps it synchronised across your devices. Edit the file on your laptop, the changes appear on your phone and on the web version. This is convenient and useful.
But syncing is designed to keep your files accessible and up to date. It mirrors what happens on your device. And that is exactly the problem.
If you delete a file, the deletion syncs. The file disappears from all your devices and from the cloud.
If ransomware encrypts your files, the encrypted versions sync to the cloud, replacing the originals.
If someone with access to your account deletes an entire folder, it is gone everywhere simultaneously.
Syncing does exactly what it is supposed to do – it keeps everything the same across all locations. That is brilliant for convenience. It is terrible for protection.
Five scenarios where syncing fails and backup saves you
1. Accidental deletion beyond the recycle bin OneDrive and Google Drive have recycle bins that hold deleted files for a limited time (30 to 93 days depending on the service and settings). After that, the files are permanently gone. If you do not notice a deletion within that window – and with busy teams working across hundreds of files, it happens – there is no recovery.
Backup keeps a separate copy with its own retention. Depending on your backup plan, you can recover files that were deleted weeks or months ago.
2. Ransomware Ransomware encrypts files on your computer. If those files sync to OneDrive or Google Drive, the encrypted versions overwrite the originals in the cloud. Some services offer version history that can help, but recovering thousands of individually encrypted files from version history is a painful, time-consuming process – if it works at all.
Backup stored off-site and disconnected from your network is not affected by ransomware. You restore from the last clean backup and you are back in business.
3. Account compromise If someone gains access to your Microsoft 365 or Google account – through a phishing attack, a weak password, or a data breach – they can delete, modify, or download everything in your cloud storage. Multi-factor authentication dramatically reduces this risk, but no security measure is perfect.
Backup provides a separate copy that is not accessible through the compromised account.
4. Sync errors and corruption Sync conflicts happen when multiple people edit the same file simultaneously, or when a device goes offline and comes back with changes that conflict with the cloud version. Most of the time, the sync service handles this gracefully. Sometimes it does not, and you end up with corrupted files or lost changes.
Backup gives you a point-in-time copy to fall back to.
5. Leaving a platform If you cancel your Microsoft 365 subscription, your OneDrive data is retained for a limited period and then deleted. If an employee leaves and their account is removed, their OneDrive contents follow. If you move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, your Google Drive data does not migrate automatically.
Backup ensures your data exists independently of any single platform.
What Microsoft and Google actually say about this
This is not a scare tactic. Both Microsoft and Google are transparent about their responsibility.
Microsoft’s shared responsibility model states that Microsoft is responsible for keeping the service running (uptime, availability, infrastructure). You are responsible for your data – protecting it, backing it up, and retaining it.
In practical terms: Microsoft guarantees that OneDrive will be available. They do not guarantee that your data will be recoverable if you delete it, if it is encrypted by ransomware, or if your account is compromised.
Google’s terms are similar. They provide the platform. You own and are responsible for the data on it.
This is not a criticism of either service. They are excellent at what they are designed to do. But backup is not what they are designed to do.
What actual backup looks like
The difference between syncing and backup comes down to three things:
Separation A real backup is stored independently from the source. It is not connected to the same account, the same network, or the same device. If something happens to the original, the backup is unaffected.
Retention Syncing shows you the current state of your files. Backup shows you the state of your files at specific points in time. If you need to recover a file as it was last Tuesday, backup can do that. Syncing cannot (version history helps in limited cases, but it is not the same as systematic point-in-time backup).
Monitoring A backup that nobody checks is not much better than no backup at all. Proper backup includes monitoring to confirm that every backup job completed successfully and that the data is intact. If a backup fails, someone should know about it within hours, not months.
For Microsoft 365 specifically, a third-party backup solution covers your Exchange email, OneDrive files, SharePoint sites, and Teams data. It runs automatically, retains data independently of your M365 subscription, and can restore individual files, folders, mailboxes, or entire accounts.
What to do right now
If your business currently relies on OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox as your only form of data protection, here is what to do:
- Do not panic. Syncing is not useless – it protects against device failure and gives you access from anywhere. It just does not replace backup. You are not starting from zero.
- Identify what you cannot afford to lose. Email, client files, financial records, project data. Where does each of these live?
- Check your current recovery options. How long does OneDrive keep deleted files? Do you have version history enabled? What happens to data if a user account is removed? Knowing the limits helps you understand the gap.
- Get M365 backup in place. If your business runs on Microsoft 365, a third-party backup for Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams is the single most impactful thing you can add. It is not expensive relative to the data it protects.
- Back up anything that is only on local machines. Files saved to desktops, local databases, anything that is not in the cloud at all. These are your highest-risk items.
Want to know if your data is actually protected?
We can review your current setup – what is synced, what is backed up, and where the gaps are – and give you a clear picture of what is covered and what is at risk.
Or get in touch directly:
Call: 087 820 5005 WhatsApp: 081 526 1626
For more detail on backup options, tiers, and recovery testing, see our business continuity solutions.
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