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Design a Cloud File Storage Service

Last updated: May 19, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates competency in designing large-scale distributed file storage and collaboration systems, covering storage and metadata modeling, API design, synchronization and consistency models, resumable large-file handling, versioning, access control, scalability, availability, durability, and security.

  • medium
  • Harvey
  • System Design
  • Software Engineer

Design a Cloud File Storage Service

Company: Harvey

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Design a cloud file storage and collaboration service similar to Google Drive. The system should support: - Uploading, downloading, deleting, moving, and renaming files and folders. - A hierarchical folder structure per user or organization. - Sharing files and folders with users or groups using permissions such as owner, editor, commenter, and viewer. - Large file uploads with resumability. - File version history and restore. - Synchronization across web, desktop, and mobile clients. - Search by file name and basic metadata. - High availability, durability, and security. Assume the service has tens of millions of users, stores petabytes of data, and must handle high read and write traffic. Describe the high-level architecture, APIs, storage model, metadata model, synchronization strategy, consistency model, scaling approach, and major trade-offs.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates competency in designing large-scale distributed file storage and collaboration systems, covering storage and metadata modeling, API design, synchronization and consistency models, resumable large-file handling, versioning, access control, scalability, availability, durability, and security.

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Harvey logo
Harvey
Apr 12, 2026, 12:00 AM
Software Engineer
Technical Screen
System Design
1
0

Design a cloud file storage and collaboration service similar to Google Drive.

The system should support:

  • Uploading, downloading, deleting, moving, and renaming files and folders.
  • A hierarchical folder structure per user or organization.
  • Sharing files and folders with users or groups using permissions such as owner, editor, commenter, and viewer.
  • Large file uploads with resumability.
  • File version history and restore.
  • Synchronization across web, desktop, and mobile clients.
  • Search by file name and basic metadata.
  • High availability, durability, and security.

Assume the service has tens of millions of users, stores petabytes of data, and must handle high read and write traffic. Describe the high-level architecture, APIs, storage model, metadata model, synchronization strategy, consistency model, scaling approach, and major trade-offs.

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