Backupery a bit buggy?

[idoc 400]

So after following several threads here regarding how to backup EN v10 (windows) I decided to try Backupery.  I elected the trial "limited" version so I could see what it could do.  There is an option to "continue using in the test mode" rather than "buy a license key".  Even at this initial stage I was not sure what the trial version would do because of a spelling mistake regarding how many notes on each notebook would be sampled (I don't want to elaborate on this right now).   The program appeared to start backing up my database but eventually just hung with a "not responding" message on top of it.  I tried closing it down and then re-opening without success.  Ultimately I had to use Task Manager to force it to close.  I then re-opened it and it said  "Backup in progress" and "Completed 668.9 MB".  A few minutes later the "Completed 668.9MB" changed to "Comple"  (actual spelling).  No idea if it is still backing up, if it's done,  if it's failed etc.  In short, very buggy experience.  I was hoping that by paying for this program I could avoid the complexity of dealing with the free Evernote backup in Github.  I am not a techy, have zero experience in coding,  and was reluctant to go on a steep learning curve in Github.  

 

these lengths.  

[agsteele 2,950]

I'm not particularly techie but I got evernote-backup working without too much effort.

I've never used Backuppery but those that have report that it can be a longish process with the first pass.

[gazumped 11,667]

I'm a Backupery user - didn't find any issues that I'm aware of;  since I have something like a 30GB of data to download it took some days to complete,  but for a smaller account it should be reasonably quick.  The v10 version (I believe) can only currently do a complete backup - incremental backups are coming.

[idoc 400]

Hi Gazumped,

Question on Backupery.  So it completed running and I now see that it has downloaded an enex file on each notebook.  However, couldn't I do the same thing by simply right clicking on the notebook and selecting "export notebook" ?  In other words, is this all that Backupery does ie: automate the downloading of the enex files to a backup location?  In only have about 7 notebooks so it seems as if I could easily do this myself.  Or is there something else that I'm missing here?

Addendum: With Legacy I would download the enex files in this manner but I would also download the user.exb file also.  This exb file has disappeared with v10.  According to Pink and others the new way is to swap in the entire database folder.  Therefore, my new backup technique will be to manually backup the enex files and the database folder once a month.  Don't really see why I need the Backupery program at all.

[gazumped 11,667]

31 minutes ago, idoc said:

Don't really see why I need the Backupery program at all.

With only 7 notebooks,  you quite possibly don't.  I have 400+....

Backupery does allow you to automate the process - which can be handy if you're busy and want to be sure that you get your last week or month's work correctly backed up.  I was looking into the possibility that other automation apps like MS Power Automate would do the necessary keystrokes for me to save my notebooks to ENEX,  but it's one of those things I can never spend enough time on to work out how to do it...

[idoc 400]

I understand.  By the way, this is one unexpected advantage of using a system that de-emphasizes notebooks.  My only notebooks pertain to Work, Home, Inbox etc.  So there is a total of 7.  Most of my organization is on the basis of tags, naming conventions etc.  Therefore, all I have to do is manually export 7 files which I am beginning to realize will be much simpler than dealing with Github or Backupery.  In retrospect I realize that much of the discussions centering on optimal organizational approaches did not really mention the backup advantages of having fewer notebooks.

[PinkElephant 8,118]

That’s true, less notebooks make life easier.

The GitHub project is really nice, and it runs in the background, independently from the client. With a little effort you can even execute it based on a schedule.

That’s IMHO better than a manual operation, that may get forgotten when the heat is the greatest - as maybe the need for a backup.

[Denis L 50]

Hi Idoc!

20 hours ago, idoc said:

So after following several threads here regarding how to backup EN v10 (windows) I decided to try Backupery.  I elected the trial "limited" version so I could see what it could do. <...>

Backupery developer is here. Thank you for trying the app and I'm really sorry for the issues!

The idea behind the app is that it should provide an easy way to regularly export Evernote data without the need to manually export each notebook using Evernote client. 

It looks like something gone wrong during the export process, so could you please send me the application log file so I could analyze it and find out what the problem is? If yes, then go to the Help tab in the app and press the "Open Log Directory" link. Just PM me the files here or email to contact@backupery.com, please. 

Please let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help!

 

[idoc 400]

Thanks Denis.  Actually, Backupery completed doing its download.  It was not clear to me from the website what it was actually downloading in the trial version.  I thought I saw the number "10" mentioned, so I thought perhaps it would be 10 notes of each notebook?  The final download was much smaller than my entire database so I'm pretty sure that it did not download the entire database but only a certain number of notes from each notebook.  The exact number was not clear to me.

Anyway, the program works and for someone who has a lot of notebooks it would probably be a non-brainer.  I have 7 notebooks and it was very easy for me to export an enex file of each one to my Gdrive.  So, I don't think I personally need Backupery.  However, from what I could see it does work well.  Thanks.

[Denis L 50]

Thank you for your reply and glad to hear it completed the export! Yes, at this moment the trial application exports 10 the most recent notes from each notebook. That's why your final download was much smaller than your entire database. We definitely should improve the wording though, so thanks for the hint. 

I'm not sure why the app was hanging though, so I'll try to reproduce the problem in my lab and try to see what could be causing the problem.

14 hours ago, idoc said:

Thanks Denis.  Actually, Backupery completed doing its download. <...>

[idoc 400]

OK.  However,   I noticed that when I looked at my inbox there were about 70 notes that had appeared there.  These were all blank notes ie: apart from the header there was nothing else.  They all said "Not available in the free trial".  I am appending one example and a screen shot of part of the entire list.   The actual notes are fine and they are located in all of my other notebooks.  I suspect what happened is that I am seeing 10 notes from each of my 7 notebooks showing up in my Inbox all at the same time.  It was not a problem and I was easily able to remove them.  However, if someone has 400 notebooks they may have seen 4000 of these show up.  Just a head's up.

[Denis L 50]

Hi idoc, thank you for the info and I'm sorry for the late reply. 

Just to make sure I understand the issue correctly - you exported your Evernote notebooks using the tool and then imported the ENEX files into some other account, right? 

If yes, then I got your point - those empty notes are really confusing. Perhaps we shouldn't add them into ENEX files at all and leave the fully exported notes only. We'll definitely consider adding this into the next version of the app.

[idoc 400]

OK.  However,   I noticed that when I looked at my inbox there were about 70 notes that had appeared there.  These were all blank notes ie: apart from the header there was nothing else.  They all said "Not available in the free trial".  I am appending one example and a screen shot of part of the entire list.   The actual notes are fine and they are located in all of my other notebooks.  I suspect what happened is that I am seeing 10 notes from each of my 7 notebooks showing up in my Inbox all at the same time.  It was not a problem and I was easily able to remove them.  However, if someone has 400 notebooks they may have seen 4000 of these show up.  Just a head's up.

[idoc 400]

No.  I downloaded Backupery and simply asked it to backup my notebooks into enex files.  I had 7 notebooks and it took about half an hour to complete.  After that, I could see that there 7 enex files that had been created on my backup external drive.  So far, so good ie: this is exactly what I was expecting it to do.  However, what I didn't expect is that it actually altered my original EN inbox by putting in 70 blank notes in there.  I deleted them all but wasn't really sure what happened.  Actually, I was pretty worried initially because some of those notes are pretty crucial and, at first, I thought I had lost all the data within the notes.  However, I then figured out that the real notes were sitting in all of the other notebooks and what I was seeing were just blank notes all sitting in my inbox.  It was pretty strange and I assume that it must be a glitch.  For example, Gazumped who has 400 notebooks would probably have seen 4000 blank notes appear in his inbox!

[Denis L 50]

Hi idoc, thank you for clarification. It is definitely not expected behavior as the application is never supposed to create/modify any Evernote data. I'm currenlty trying to figure out any idea on how this could happen. I'll keep this thread updated.

[Denis L 50]

Hi Idoc, just a quick question - is it possible that your Evernote is configured in such a way that it automatically imports data from the backup destination directory to your Inbox notebook? Something like on the screenshot below:

If yes, then it can explain how the exported files could have ended up in your Inbox notebook.

[idoc 400]

I think I backed it up to a newly created folder on my desktop. It is not connected to the default “Add to Evernote” folder that shunts all files to the Inbox folder. It’s possible that I made an error and if so your explanation makes sense.  

[Denis L 50]

Idoc, I've just figured out a way to check if those notes were imported automatically by Evernote, so may I ask you to check it? If yes, then

1. Just export the note to ENEX format using your Evernote client (even if the note is in Trash it is still possible to export it):
   
2. Open the exported ENEX file using any text editor, Notepad, for example.
3. Search for the "<source>" line:
   
   If the source is "import.folder" then the note was created by Evernote client automatically using the import folder, otherwise it was created in some other way.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

[idoc 400]

Yes, the source line is:

<source>import.folder</source>

I guess that explains it.  I appreciate your clarifying that.

[Denis L 50]

idoc, thanks so much for confirming that!

Also, we've found the reason why the user interface hung during the export. It was a bug in the app that made the user interface unusable during large resource processing under some circumstances. We've fixed that in the v. 2135 (and higher), so everybody welcome to update! To update, just download the new version here and install it over your current installation - your settings will be preserved. Actually updating is optional as the app will automatically update as needed by default.

[dbvirago 502]

I've had the product for a few weeks, but haven't had time to complete a full backup. With 13K notes, I am currently at 30 hours and counting. Part of that is the frequent Quota Reached stalls. I am assuming on subsequent backups only changed notes or notebooks are backed up? 

Also, to someone that mentioned it only created an .enex of each notebook, mine is also creating an HTML for each notebook. This would be much more useful if for some reason, EN was unusable. 

But so far, it's easy, just time consuming. 

[gazumped 11,667]

27 minutes ago, dbvirago said:

But so far, it's easy, just time consuming. 

Agreed! I did a full backup of 60K notes over 5 days.  If you want,  it should be possible to opt out of HTML saves in Settings,  and the Quota pauses are a pain.  I did verify with Backupery that if you switch the device off or otherwise lose connection during the process,  BU will resume when the system does.  At the moment I believe full backups are the only option.  Not ideal,  but if you have a lot of notebooks it is a relatively painless way to back things up...

[dbvirago 502]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

 If you want,  it should be possible to opt out of HTML saves in Settings,

I'll see how the next one goes. Maybe I alternate between enex and html. 

[MvdH 407]

Question for @Denis L   I have 15k notes and 40k in trash. I am very happy with backuppery. Great value for money for me. Making backups takes way too long due to the API call limits Evernote applies. Would not want incremental ones, but would like caching the DB so the API limits kick in less often. The full Backup could the be drawn from cache DB and API calls for changes. Do love the Backuppery automatic keeping multiple backups and deleting old ones. The question, do my 40k notes in trash also get backed up? Not necessary, but would be nice. 

[Denis L 50]

On 10/20/2023 at 7:36 PM, dbvirago said:

I've had the product for a few weeks, but haven't had time to complete a full backup. With 13K notes, I am currently at 30 hours and counting. Part of that is the frequent Quota Reached stalls. I am assuming on subsequent backups only changed notes or notebooks are backed up? 

Thank you for using our app! There are two main reasons why the backups may be slow at this time:

• Evernote API rate limits. Evernote protects their servers from overload so they put some limits on the usage. That means that third-party apps need to do some pauses from time to time in order not to exceed the number of requests per hour. That is why the app has to just wait from time to time in order to continue downloading the data again. A bit more information about rate limits is here: https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/rate_limits.php
• Full Backups. At the moment of writing the application does full backups each time. It means that it downloads all the notebooks and notes on each scheduled backup. Of course, if the database is pretty large, it is time-consuming.

To overcome both issues, we’re planning to add delta backups functionality, so the first backup only will be full and all the subsequent ones will contain changes only. In this case it would hopefully work faster as it will download significantly less data.

On 10/20/2023 at 9:41 PM, MvdH said:

Question for @Denis L   I have 15k notes and 40k in trash. I am very happy with backuppery. Great value for money for me. Making backups takes way too long due to the API call limits Evernote applies. Would not want incremental ones, but would like caching the DB so the API limits kick in less often. The full Backup could the be drawn from cache DB and API calls for changes. Do love the Backuppery automatic keeping multiple backups and deleting old ones. The question, do my 40k notes in trash also get backed up? Not necessary, but would be nice. 

Thank you for the hint. We’ll definitely consider implementing some caching mechanism as well!

Notes that are in the trash are omitted by default at this moment and they are not downloaded. I think we should add an ability to back up them as well though. I’ve just put the task on our roadmap!

[dbvirago 502]

Okay, then I'll definitely restrict it to enex or html. I assume that will make it faster? It took about 75 hours the first time.  I'll may drop down to twice or once monthly. That's a lot of recourses to tie up for 3 days+ every week. Please let us know when you have incremental backups. 

 

Edit: It also occurs to me to uncheck archival notebooks. Would those be left alone on my backup drive if a future backup excludes them?

[Denis L 50]

On 10/22/2023 at 9:31 PM, dbvirago said:

Okay, then I'll definitely restrict it to enex or html. I assume that will make it faster? It took about 75 hours the first time.  I'll may drop down to twice or once monthly. That's a lot of recourses to tie up for 3 days+ every week. 

I'm pretty sure that the download process takes most of the time and restricting just to ENEX or HTML won't make it significantly faster. I'll check my statistics and report back though.

 

On 10/22/2023 at 9:31 PM, dbvirago said:

Please let us know when you have incremental backups. 

Absolutely, I'll post here when the incremental backups will be available.

 

On 10/22/2023 at 9:31 PM, dbvirago said:

Edit: It also occurs to me to uncheck archival notebooks. Would those be left alone on my backup drive if a future backup excludes them?

Yes, they be left alone on your backup drive if your future backup exludes them. You may also consider increasing the number of backups to keep on your backup destination:

If the number of backups reaches the limit, the obsolete backups are removed to save the destination space.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help!

[Denis L 50]

4 hours ago, Denis L said:

I'm pretty sure that the download process takes most of the time and restricting just to ENEX or HTML won't make it significantly faster. I'll check my statistics and report back though.

My tests show that data download step takes about 80-90% of the backup time, so yes, I'm confirming that at this moment disabling ENEX or HTML conversion should not change the backup time significantly.

[dbvirago 502]

Denis, every time I do a manual export it works fine. Every time I try to run it on a schedule, I get some variation of below soon after it starts. Same external SSD drive used in both cases. 

[Denis L 50]

On 10/27/2023 at 12:08 PM, dbvirago said:

Denis, every time I do a manual export it works fine. Every time I try to run it on a schedule, I get some variation of below soon after it starts. Same external SSD drive used in both cases. 

Thank you for reporting the issue and I'm sorry for the trouble!

May I ask you to send me the error log file so I could analyze it and find out what the problem is? If yes, then go to the Help tab in the app and press the "Open Log Directory" link. Just DM me the file  BackuperyForEvernote.exe_WarningsAndErrors.log. 

Alternatively, you may want to try the following workaround:

 Create two backup destinations:

1. A folder on your local drive ("C:\Backup", for example).
2. You external USB drive destination.

Please note, your local directory should be first in the list:

 

So the app will work with the first directory during the export and just copy the results to the second directory when the export is complete.

Hope this helps. Please let me know how it goes.

[MvdH 407]

@Denis L I just noted on your website that Backupery for Evernote is discontinued. Sad to see that!

The automatic clean-up and retention and such was a great focus/time saver for me.

What happened? I'm sure you had good reasons.

However, I really appreciated the program and your work. Thank you for that!

Now I'll resort to the github back-up without automatic retention and HTML versions of notes parallel to ENEX files. I'll survive.

Have a great year Denis! Thx again for the product I used for years.

[Denis L 50]

Yes, after careful consideration we decided to refocus our efforts on other applications. Not so many people are using Backupery for Evernote and being a small team we simply can't afford to continue developing the application. It was a tough decision, because a lot of effort has been put into the application during these years. We will still make fixes and improvements though, at least for a year. 

Thanks so much for using the application and providing great feedback! As I noted, we'll continue to support the app and deliver bug fixes for a year.

Please let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
 

[gazumped 11,667]

Just for the record,  my copy of Backupery is still working - in fact this post made me remember I started a backup a few days ago but didn't leave the system running.  I reopened Backupery and it quietly want back to dealing with the 1,900th note (out of 25,000) in one notebook!  Thanks for a smooth product Denis - hope you can resume operations when Evernote stops messing around with their end of the operation!

[ferol 429]

On 29. 1. 2024 at 16:10, Denis L said:

Áno, po dôkladnom zvážení sme sa rozhodli preorientovať naše úsilie na iné aplikácie. Zálohovanie pre Evernote nepoužíva toľko ľudí a keďže sme malý tím, jednoducho si nemôžeme dovoliť pokračovať vo vývoji aplikácie. Bolo to ťažké rozhodnutie, pretože počas týchto rokov sa do aplikácie vložilo veľa úsilia. Stále však budeme robiť opravy a vylepšenia, aspoň na rok. 

Ďakujeme, že používate aplikáciu a poskytujete skvelú spätnú väzbu! Ako som poznamenal, aplikáciu budeme naďalej podporovať a poskytovať opravy chýb po dobu jedného roka.

Ak máte nejaké otázky, dajte mi vedieť, rád na ne odpoviem.
 

Too bad, I wanted to test it for sure, but since the development won't continue, it doesn't make sense then.

 

[ferol 429]

So a question on such a backup option.

So far I have backed up the entire Evenote Legacy database using Cobian backup on a Windows server.

I have a special free Evernote account only for backups, which is shared with several other accounts (mine, my wife's, company's...)

And the backup has been running this way for different periods of time. Daily, weekly, monthly, etc..

The point was that in case of any failure on the service side, or hacking of some account, I would be able to upload the whole database Offline to Legacy and then solve it with e.g. ENEX, HTML exports ...

But Legacy ends. So I have to look for a solution for v.10

And the question is for the technically knowledgeable. 

Can I use the Evernote v.10 database in the same way and therefore continue exactly the same procedure but with the current v.10 database?

If not, why not?

[agsteele 2,950]

9 minutes ago, ferol said:

Can I use the Evernote v.10 database in the same way and therefore continue exactly the same procedure but with the current v.10 database?

We all think so but I don't know if anyone has tried it. On Windows there are several directories you'll need to capture %LocalAppData%\Programs\Evernote is the key one.

I think you should try it out. But I'd contend the evernote-backup routine which captures all your notes 

[ferol 429]

1 minute ago, agsteele said:

We all think so but I don't know if anyone has tried it. On Windows there are several directories you'll need to capture %LocalAppData%\Programs\Evernote is the key one.

I found this now.. this looks also promissing:

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/145836-how-to-make-proper-and-automated-back-ups-of-evernote-v10-data-on-windows-solved/?do=findComment&comment=706757

 

 

[bmcl26 488]

On 1/29/2024 at 6:08 PM, gazumped said:

Just for the record,  my copy of Backupery is still working

Yes, I am still using it.

[gazumped 11,667]

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