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Evernote is Officially NOT a Backup Service


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Evernote is Officially NOT a Backup Service
 
There has been some discussion about using Evernote as a backup system.
The official User Guidelines published by Evernote clearly state that it is NOT to be used for backup purposes.
 
 
As of Thu, May 7, 2015
 

 

You agree that when you use the Service:

 
  • You Won’t Use Evernote to Back Up Your Hard Drive or Do Other Things It’s Not Intended For.
     
  • Evernote is designed and built around a core set of productivity-enhancing use cases. Things like note taking, web clipping, image capture, task management, collaboration and discussion, and sharing documents—the core activities that support the modern way we work together (otherwise known as “Intended Uses”). Evernote is not designed for cloud backup, file synchronization, or file storage/archiving (“Unsupported Uses”). Examples of Unsupported Uses include systematically backing up a hard drive, storing a media library, automatically archiving emails or files, or maintaining large quantities of files for storage-only purposes. Using Evernote for these purposes may result in you and/or other users having a significantly degraded Evernote experience. The quality of your Evernote experience depends on using Evernote for its Intended Uses.

 

 

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Thanks for that @JMichael.

 

An open admission of the software's limitations, despite the Premium unlimited upload promotion. Many have long since come up against a degraded performance when having attempted to get Evernote to remember everything (Yes...I know this is not the current tagline). Basically, backup and or storage aside, Evernote's intended use does not encompass being able to search all or even most of what one might want to find, depending on how much one has. One needs to make tough decisions and decide what of your stuff you would want to remember/ find/ search within Evernote. Dropbox is going to take full advantage of this one way or another as they launch into the note-taking space in due course. 

 

Would it not be a nice gesture from Evernote to now come out with some metrics on how much might be too much? 

 

Is this a way of washing one's hands clean in the event of data loss? The best case scenario would be to have everything backed up to a dinkum backup service... BUT... if Evernote is supposed to be the "Workspace for your life's work", one either has to backup everything created in Evernote very frequently for fear of one's work being lost... or work elsewhere and then select what you'd like to put into Evernote to remember. Doesn't feel like a very secure/ convenient workspace... in theory.

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Just read over the full guidelines... and taken within the full context, the above excerpt does not seem at all objectionable or out of place now. In essence, they're saying, "Be sensible and play nice."

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@Frank:

 

So I suspect that Evernote may have some type of throttle on uploads to try to detect a massive upload, like all the files on your hard drive.

When triggered, it probably stops the upload sync until it can be analyzed and cleared.

 

Just guessing -- I have no supporting facts.

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Just read over the full guidelines... and taken within the full context, the above excerpt does not seem at all objectionable or out of place now. In essence, they're saying, "Be sensible and play nice."

 

I had a different take. A backup service has a higher bar in terms of keeping files in usable shape.  To me this sound like legalese for "don't sue us if we lose your stuff, we're not a backup service."

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I'm in the legalese camp.  When I read the following:

 

"Evernote is not designed for cloud backup, file synchronization, or file storage/archiving (“Unsupported Uses”). Examples of Unsupported Uses include systematically backing up a hard drive, storing a media library, automatically archiving emails or files, or maintaining large quantities of files for storage-only purposes. Using Evernote for these purposes may result in you and/or other users having a significantly degraded Evernote experience. The quality of your Evernote experience depends on using Evernote for its Intended Uses."

 

A couple of thoughts come up.

 

- I get that EN is not Dropbox and not intended for file storage in that sense but EN does allow us to attach and therefore store/archive these files into their service, and they provide import folders specifically for this purpose, so where is the line drawn? 

- The quality of your EN experience statement appears to me to be an attempt to explain away the scaling issue.  If you are not happy with your user experience, then it must be because you are using EN outside of its intended use ...

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