(Archived) Upload calculation method

[scatteredbrain 0]

Hi.

I am curious to know how exactly Evernote calculates what is included in the upload amount that counts towards the user upload amount.

I am a new premium user and have noticed an interesting phenomenon:

I have been adding quite a few images to a notebook from a screen capture utility. I drag them to the notebook in question and as soon as they are added to the notebook, they are counted as part of the upload amount for my account according to the little status bar at the top of the evernote window. This is without syncing the service as I have my account set to sync manually only. However, if I continue to work with these notes and delete a portion of them(or even all of them if I want to re-upload them for some reason), the upload quota bar does not decrease after the notes are deleted from the notebook. Since these notes are no longer going to be uploaded to my account when I sync, why are they still counted as part of my monthly upload amount? It seems as though Evernote is calculating the “upload” amounts based upon the amount of information added to the notebook, NOT the amount of information that is actually synced to the evernote service. This seems to me to be a bit disingenuous because it means I could theoretically waste my entire upload amount without syncing a single note to the evernote servers just by adding a bunch of notes, having them added to my upload amount, deleting them, and not having them removed from my quota.

Am I missing something? If there is a way to make sure that only the information that is synced to the servers be counted towards my pload limit, please let me know.

[engberg 89]

The client keeps its own local calculation of how much unsynchronized data is sitting on that client, potentially available for upload. This allows it to enforce the limit correctly without relying on the server to fail.

The client counts any notes towards your "virtual" upload quota if they were created in a synchronized notebook and not synchronized.

This can be a little confusing if you make a big note and then put it in the Trash before you sync. The client counts that note against your quota so that you can safely remove it from the Trash without going over your limit. If you empty the Trash on the client, it will clear those out and free up the quota.

[scatteredbrain 0]

Cool, thanks!

I currently have around 1350 notes sitting in my trash and whenever I try and empty the trash it freezes evernote.

Is there a way I can successfully delete these notes in the trash, not crash evernote, and still be calculated correctly(e.g. no backdoor deletions that might not register as proper deletions according to the client)?

[engberg 89]

Wow, that's strange. If you have access to the Activity Log (under the Help menu), that might contain information about the freeze/crash.

Otherwise, we may need to rebuild your local Mac database from scratch. I can send instructions for this.

[scatteredbrain 0]

I can get the activity log but don't see anything that screams out “Here is where the crash happened” Is there something I can look for specifically that happens when crashes occur? Also, does it matter if it just hangs and I force quit it vs. it crashing? I have been force quitting it because it becomes unresponsive, so I guess it's not technically crashing, it is technically not responding. It seems to work fine if I leave the trash alone, so I have been doing that, but if emptying the trash will change my upload usage I'd like to try anything that could shrink it. I'm about halfway full right now and don't forsee going over my limit before the month is done, but you never know.

[scatteredbrain 0]

Ok, thanks. I got the email from support about the procedure to rebuild the database but I ended up not needing to do that. I emptied the trash and when it hung I left and ran an errand. When I got back the trash was empty and Evernote was back.

But the problem of upload amounts still confuses me:

I emptied the trash but nothing happened to my quota. I would have thought based upon your reply that any unsynced notes that were trashed before synchronization would not be counted towards my upload quota but it appears as though they have. At least the quota meter did not go down when I came back from the trash emptying. Am I missing something?

The client keeps its own local calculation of how much unsynchronized data is sitting on that client, potentially available for upload. This allows it to enforce the limit correctly without relying on the server to fail.

The client counts any notes towards your "virtual" upload quota if they were created in a synchronized notebook and not synchronized.

So what you(Evernote) are actually tracking/counting is evernote's potential upload amount. That is to say, everything that gets copied to a synchronized notebook could, in theory be synchronized to the Evernote servers and therefore gets counted before any bit of information is actually synchronized to the servers?

This can be a little confusing if you make a big note and then put it in the Trash before you sync. The client counts that note against your quota so that you can safely remove it from the Trash without going over your limit. If you empty the Trash on the client, it will clear those out and free up the quota.

Ok, that makes a little more sense, but it appears(at least in my limited testing) that this is not the case. Granted I only have the one data point, but I'll keep trying to see if it actually works this way. I guess the important thing is that if I don't want stuff counted towards my upload quota I should remember to empty the trash before I sync? That's fine, but I think you might want to maybe remind others of this in case they have the same questions.

Do you think that you guys might consider adding a “Empty trash on exit” checkbox to the preferences of a later version? That way when people quit they could have their trash emptied and not have it counted towards their upload quota(assuming they haven't synced their notebooks).

That or you could enable server-side quota checking to more accurately track what exactly is being sent to the server instead of what “potentially could“ be uploaded when the notebook is synced?

[engberg 89]

If the software is operating properly, then the only reason the upload allowance meter on the client should be different from the upload allowance meter on the service (after a successful sync) is if the client has unsynchronized notes in the Trash.

If you emptied the Trash and still saw a discrepancy between the client and web, then that would indicate something mysterious (e.g. a bug).