(Archived) Data structure and cleaning out old material

[rstrauch 0]

I was prowling though my Evernote data in my ~/Library folder today to try to understand where and how Evernote keeps things, and I found data from Notebooks that I thought I had deleted two years ago. That data was in

~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Evernote/data/51783.obsolete/content

while my current data was even deeper in the tree, in

~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application%20Support/Evernote/accounts/Evernote/rstrauch/content/

This concerns me for two reasons. First, I don't like finding data that I thought I had removed from my computer two years ago still hanging around in obscure places. This seems like a real security failure. Second, the convoluted path to my current data -- down through a couple of different layers that seem to consist primarily of aliases pointing up to the layers above them -- seems like sloppy and hence possibly unreliable data management design.

I have archives that go back over 30 years, to the Apple II+ I bought in 1978. One of my concerns with any software used to store data long term is understanding how it stores and manages that data well enough to have some confidence that I can access the data if the company goes belly up and the software stops working. Right now I'm not feeling that confidence and this leaves me very uneasy about putting my faith in Evernote.

Is the structure that Evernote uses to store and manage the data we give it documented anywhere that a user can see it? The only documentation I've found so far about the data structure that Evernote uses to store and manage the data we give it was a statement in the knowledge base article on Backing up and Restoring Data, where it says the data is stored in

/Library/Application Support/accounts/Evernote

and that's clearly not true in my case. Also, can I delete the branch of the tree that contains the stuff I thought I threw away two year ago without ***** anything up with my current notebooks?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

You are a better spelunker than me! Thanks for doing this, and turning up interesting results. By September of this year, I had somehow created a database of 25 GB from only 13GB of uploads. My iPad somehow knew that I only had 13 my Windows computer thought I had 17 (if I recall correctly), but I could never figure out why the Mac had so much. Because my Air was regularly running out of storage (I thought I had at least another year before) I was in a bind. I decided to strip out all of my attachments and reduce my account to about 100 megabytes. Now it is more manageable, but I wonder now if this obsolete stuff had something to do with my dilemma. When I get some time, I'll try and sort through my backup to see.

I won't say it is sloppy, but I will say it is definitely bloated. Even now, I think my 100 or so megabytes (I've recorded the exact number somewhere on these forums) is several times larger than the amount I put into it. Documentation would be nice. Perhaps they could write about it on the tech blog.