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QUESTION: Are files in Evernote also stored locally at the original file size?


Lord Fish

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I'm wondering if files that I add to my notes via Evernote for Mac are also duplicated locally on my computer's hard drive.

For example, if I create a note and insert a 20 MB PDF, is that same 20 MB PDF added to an Evernote folder somewhere on my hard drive?

Looking in the Library folder com.evernote.Evernote, it appears all notes regardless of content are 4 KB, but I'm wondering if the original file sizes are stored somewhere else.

Should I just be using Evernote for Web if I'm concerned about disk space?

Thanks.

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19 replies to this idea

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  • Level 5*

The trend towards more storage and memory at the same or lower price point continues. All the new Mac Book Pros have larger hard drives than their predecessors. The new Airs have larger SSDs and the new retina MBP has up to 768gb of SSD.

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In the way of an update since 2013, has Evernote updated it capability so that one can reduce hard drive Evernote storage by having some notebooks purely in the cloud and not on the hard drive like with Dropbox Selective Sync?

 

Thanks for reply.

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I too have a MBA and love it.  I'm also a premium member and love Evernote.  However, I would never give up my MBA and buy a computer just for Evernote!  All I need is to be able to use remote storage (USB hard disk is all I want) for my Evernote data.

 

I too am running out of memory and find the "use the web" argument entirely unconvincing.  I would understand if the answer was "there isn't enough MBA market for us to use our limited development resource" far better.

 

Of all the user environments that need the ability to specify an "off-platform" location for the database, it is the MBA crowd and yet EN has that capability for those that don't need it (Windows).

 

I doubt an Evernote employee will answer this, but might save me the trouble of looking for an alternative and suggest that the MBA crowd has a point.  OR, tell me the truth and let me look for an alternative...

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I do have a MBA, and would like to see the option for "Selective Sync" of my notebooks, similar to Dropbox or Google Drive.

or, if you want to use the app, (as suggested by an evernote employee) have one account for your main stuff (synced with that other device), and another for your mba. share a notebook and you can edit and create notes without having to sync the entire account, because you are only sharin one notebook.

It seems much too cumbersome to have two Evernote accounts, especially since I routinely post to and use a number of different notebooks for different purposes, at different times. For example, I have an interior design notebook for inspiration when furnishing my new apartment. Then, I have a daily journal. I also have commonly-used customer service numbers, to-do lists, and WordPress tutorials. I don't necessarily need all of them at once, but I would like the ability to download when needed. I don't mind waiting an hour or overnight for sync in order to save disk space when I'm not using certain notebooks.

My vote is to add this as a premium feature. :-)

I have an MBA as well, and would like to see the selective sync feature too. I've posted that on the forums, and I think it is in line with what Evernote plans to do. Just wanted to make it clear that I agree, and I think you are in good company :)

My suggestions were workarounds under the current system. It is not ideal, but it is a possibility that may work for some people if/until we have selective sync. Evernote is growing and continually improving. Hopefully, this is nearby on the roadmap :)

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I do have a MBA, and would like to see the option for "Selective Sync" of my notebooks, similar to Dropbox or Google Drive.

or, if you want to use the app, (as suggested by an evernote employee) have one account for your main stuff (synced with that other device), and another for your mba. share a notebook and you can edit and create notes without having to sync the entire account, because you are only sharin one notebook.

It seems much too cumbersome to have two Evernote accounts, especially since I routinely post to and use a number of different notebooks for different purposes, at different times. For example, I have an interior design notebook for inspiration when furnishing my new apartment. Then, I have a daily journal. I also have commonly-used customer service numbers, to-do lists, and WordPress tutorials. I don't necessarily need all of them at once, but I would like the ability to download when needed. I don't mind waiting an hour or overnight for sync in order to save disk space when I'm not using certain notebooks.

My vote is to add this as a premium feature. :-)

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It's a long-term trend. Unfortunately, the prices of hard drives have been short-term affected by the tsunami in Asia. See e.g. http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

Overall, prices tend to go down over time.

Yep. I agree that prices tend to go down over time. When there is demand. I wonder, though, if there will be that demand in the future with the great wifi external drives, remote logins, and cloud services that are available now.

As excited as I am about SSD, the sizes now are pretty usable for most people (too small for me, but I recognize I have more data than most people), and those who need more memory could pay $500 to get a few more gigabytes, or pay 1/5 of that for a terabyte / firewire external drive. I'd go for the latter, especially since you can use that external drive on your next device, the one after that, and so on, and so forth.

At any rate, I live in the now, and my HD is too small today. I am sure Phil gets plenty of emails goading him about due dates (jbenson probably has a program set up to automatically generate these emails each day), but I think he may well have promised that this online setting was coming long before that :)

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The trend towards more storage and memory at the same or lower price point continues. All the new Mac Book Pros have larger hard drives than their predecessors. The new Airs have larger SSDs and the new retina MBP has up to 768gb of SSD.

I am not so great at predicting tech trends, but what I see available now doesn't make me think that storage at a lower price point is what we are experiencing.

The new MBAs have the same hard drive capacity they had last year. The only difference is that you now have the option to pay an outrageous sum to upgrade to a larger one. It costs $500 to get 512GB. The new iPads have the same storage capacity they had last year. We don't even get the option to increase it. The 1TB hard drives have been around for a while. You could always upgrade the MBP yourself to include them. I don't think the hard drives are really the future trend, though. In fact, with the rather underwhelming MBP upgrades (with the obvious exception of the spectacular, and spectacularly priced 15" retina), I think more and more people will be turning to the MBA and its SSD, and I doubt the large memory models will be driving sales.

Anyhow, this is all speculation about an industry (storage) about which I know very little. Let's talk about Evernote :) As mentioned above, in podcast #28 Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote) said that they'd eventually be offering the ability to have content that does not sync to your computer and stays online. He said it was inevitable. I don't know if he was concerned about storage size or sync issues, but for whatever reason, I suppose it is just a matter of time. I am very much looking forward to it!

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For what it's worth, Phil Libin said in a previous podcast that this is functionality that EN will have to look into eventually as people's databases grow larger and their physical harddrives grow smaller.

Hmmm.... Seems to me those multiple terabyte hard drives have been pretty popular in recent years. :) IMO & IME, people are storing a LOT more stuff b/c of digital music (MP3 players), going paperless & the popularity of digital cameras, pocket cams & even phones with camera/camcorder capabilities. You've got to have a place to store all that stuff!

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i assume you have an mba, because storage is constrained) for the mba,

GM, I don't know why you would assume the OP has an MBA. All computers are constrained by local storage. It is just a matter of how much.

The current MBA offers up to 256 GB of SSD, and many expect this to double to 512 GB when the new 2012 MBAs are released.

MBA with 8 GB memory and 512 GB flash storage announced at WWDC today

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2. maybe. i have requested that evernote provide "offline" notebboks capability (available on the ipad and iphone) so we can selectively sync. so far, i have failed to convince them to do this. if you use the app, it downloads all or nothing. if you use the web, it is severely restricted.

For what it's worth, Phil Libin said in a previous podcast that this is functionality that EN will have to look into eventually as people's databases grow larger and their physical harddrives grow smaller.

really?

in the most recent debate about offline notebooks in these forums, several users were adamant about the inevitable trend of more storage for less money. i don't see things that way, and more importantly, that isn't what is happening right now, and right now is all i've got :) i'd like to buy the macbook air in the next couple of months, but no chance of that with evernote (yes jm, i realize i could spend hundreds of dollars more to pay for more storage just to be able to use evernote, but i won't).

i hope phil is onboard. offline notebooks on the mac would make a big difference.

I don't think Phil said anything about the sizes of harddrives, really. That's just my own interpretation of what was said. The main point being: some users' databases will grow too large to make the current forms of syncing everything feasible.

I do think the trend goes towards smaller physical drives on computers since external storage and online storage becomes cheaper and more efficient and/or secure.

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i assume you have an mba, because storage is constrained) for the mba,

GM, I don't know why you would assume the OP has an MBA. All computers are constrained by local storage. It is just a matter of how much.

The current MBA offers up to 256 GB of SSD, and many expect this to double to 512 GB when the new 2012 MBAs are released.

It seems to me that Evernote needs to make two changes in their design:

  1. Allow each Notebook to be online, offline, or both.
  2. Allow Evernote local data to be installed on any drive (local, attached, or network).

agree about your suggested design improvements. disagree about the mba. but you knew i would.

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  • Level 5*

i assume you have an mba, because storage is constrained) for the mba,

GM, I don't know why you would assume the OP has an MBA. All computers are constrained by local storage. It is just a matter of how much.

The current MBA offers up to 256 GB of SSD, and many expect this to double to 512 GB when the new 2012 MBAs are released.

It seems to me that Evernote needs to make two changes in their design:

  1. Allow each Notebook to be online, offline, or both.
  2. Allow Evernote local data to be installed on any drive (local, attached, or network).

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  • Level 5*

2. maybe. i have requested that evernote provide "offline" notebboks capability (available on the ipad and iphone) so we can selectively sync. so far, i have failed to convince them to do this. if you use the app, it downloads all or nothing. if you use the web, it is severely restricted.

For what it's worth, Phil Libin said in a previous podcast that this is functionality that EN will have to look into eventually as people's databases grow larger and their physical harddrives grow smaller.

really?

in the most recent debate about offline notebooks in these forums, several users were adamant about the inevitable trend of more storage for less money. i don't see things that way, and more importantly, that isn't what is happening right now, and right now is all i've got :) i'd like to buy the macbook air in the next couple of months, but no chance of that with evernote (yes jm, i realize i could spend hundreds of dollars more to pay for more storage just to be able to use evernote, but i won't).

i hope phil is onboard. offline notebooks on the mac would make a big difference.

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2. maybe. i have requested that evernote provide "offline" notebboks capability (available on the ipad and iphone) so we can selectively sync. so far, i have failed to convince them to do this. if you use the app, it downloads all or nothing. if you use the web, it is severely restricted.

For what it's worth, Phil Libin said in a previous podcast that this is functionality that EN will have to look into eventually as people's databases grow larger and their physical harddrives grow smaller.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

I'm wondering if files that I add to my notes via Evernote for Mac are also stored on my computer's hard drive.

For example, if I create a note and insert a 20 MB PDF, is that same 20 MB PDF sitting in an Evernote folder somewhere on my hard drive?

Should I just be using Evernote for Web if I'm concerned about disk space?

Thanks.

hi. welcome to the forums!

1. yes. spotlight indexes the content and you can search for them outside of evernote (i prefer houdahspot).

2. maybe. i have requested that evernote provide "offline" notebboks capability (available on the ipad and iphone) so we can selectively sync. so far, i have failed to convince them to do this. if you use the app, it downloads all or nothing. if you use the web, it is severely restricted.

my advice? use the web (i assume you have an mba, because storage is constrained) for the mba, and use an inexpensive netbook or some other computer to sync with your account and download everything. when you need to do heavy-duty work (organizing notebooks and notes, moving lots of attachments in through drag and drop, etc) use that. for daily tasks, use the web.

or, if you want to use the app, (as suggested by an evernote employee) have one account for your main stuff (synced with that other device), and another for your mba. share a notebook and you can edit and create notes without having to sync the entire account, because you are only sharin one notebook.

me? i mainly use the ipad :)

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Yes, all files in the Evernote Mac client are on your computer's hard drive. If you don't use the Mac client at all and just stick to the Web client, your notes and files will exist solely in the cloud. If you're concerned about disk space, that's certainly an option. Personally, I don't like the idea of having all my data in one place without a backup.

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