(Archived) Really nervous about Evernote...

[Macchinario Straussberg 1]

Hello all,

 

I've been using Evernote for a couple of years now, and suddenly I realized that most, if not all, of my digital life is in there. I mean, that's why this thing was created, right? And it works brilliantly well, with great convenience and easiness of access, and the Premium account worths every penny.  

 

And that's why I'm really really nervous about it. My Evernote library is HUGE, with thousands of documents, notes and photos. I have some measures in place to prevent data loss (like a hard drive backup, cloud storage for photos), but still, there's  a couple of things that are really getting to my nerves:

 

1. The reliability of the service. I mean, how easy is it to recover from a catastrophic failure? Say the servers implode, my hard disk burns and I can't find a copy of the app anymore, and all I have is a bunch of .enex files in my backup. Is it readable somehow without the main app? Actually, where is the Evernote library anyway?

 

2. How big can an account be? I'm estimating about 15Gb of my stuff already in there (since I can't find the library folder), and I just keep throwing things at it. Does it have a maximum size? Or just individual files limit?

 

3. I really dislike the way it seems to treat photos. It looks like the EXIF data is stripped away when a photo is added to the library, since every picture I shared doesn't show any of that info. Is that correct?

 

 

Don't get me wrong: I really really love this service. But I'm afraid of trusting it way too much and regretting later.

[gazumped 11,661]

I think I'm in the same situation as you - Evernote is so insanely useful to me that I can't not use it,  but I do have some worries about what could happen to my data,  so I have taken the same precautions;  local backups / an alternate store for images (Picasa) with some overlaps into Evernote where it's relevant.  Although mine is HD storage,  not in the cloud.  You're storing your pics on somebody else's server and you're worried about Evernote?

 

Anyway.  As to your questions..Who knows?  If you have the Evernote desktop client and an EXB or ENEX file,  you can see your notes.  Evernote storage is in standard database format and/ or XML anyway so someone will be able to read it for you if the worst happens.  Short of a major geological intervention I don't see Evernote being off line for very long under any circumstances - remember why the Internet came about?

1. My account is about the same size as yours,  and apart from the usual issues in dealing with Big Data it isn't giving me any major problems.  If that happens I might have to pay for two accounts and split my data between home and work;  or archive and current.  It's not an issue.
2. See my initial comments - I store my 'proper' pictures in Picasa - Evernote isn't designed as a picture store.  The only snaps I have in Evernote are screen grabs or sequential exploded views of stuff I took apart.  EXIF data isn't usually relevant - the note dates and contents are what worries me...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

1. The reliability of the service. I mean, how easy is it to recover from a catastrophic failure? Say the servers implode, my hard disk burns and I can't find a copy of the app anymore, and all I have is a bunch of .enex files in my backup. Is it readable somehow without the main app? Actually, where is the Evernote library anyway?

Take a few minutes every week to export as .html. It is painless and means that it will be in just about as future proof a format as you could want.

Actually, where is the Evernote library anyway?

On the Mac there are three potential locations:

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=135

 

2. How big can an account be? I'm estimating about 15Gb of my stuff already in there (since I can't find the library folder), and I just keep throwing things at it. Does it have a maximum size? Or just individual files limit?

Lots to say about limits. Here you go:

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

 

3. I really dislike the way it seems to treat photos. It looks like the EXIF data is stripped away when a photo is added to the library, since every picture I shared doesn't show any of that info. Is that correct?

Gaz is correct. It isn't a photo storage service. However, it does fine for my purposes. The more narrowly focused your use case, the more you will benefit from a dedicated service.

 

 

Don't get me wrong: I really really love this service. But I'm afraid of trusting it way too much and regretting later.

I mirror all of my notes in nvALT (Mac) and notesy (iOS). Copying out everything and putting it into one of these two takes all of about 15 minutes. I don't have any attachments, though. If you do, you'll probably want to look at something else (VoodooPad on the Mac comes to mind), but whatever you use, it is pretty easy to get out of Evernote if you want to do so. Your data is portable and there is really nothing to worry about in this regard.

[Macchinario Straussberg 1]

GrumpyMonkey, the export to HTML... is actually a great idea! I started doing this and it does gave me A LOT peace of mind, to the point that I don't even mind anymore. This "crisis" happened after I went through an horrible experience with Notability for iPad, which sucks terribly when you need to get things out of there. It took me almost a month to reliably export everything out of it, and to check that nothing was missing. I use Evernote exclusively for everything now, and export immediately any notes done in Notability. The next step is to do an automated "Export Evernote to HTML" routine, maybe Applescript will help. 

 

The article about limits is a great reference, thanks for it. Now, about the Library: I can't find the data using the App Store version. There's a lot of stuff inside the Containers folder, mostly shortcuts to places inside my hard drive. But since the HTML tip worked so well I'm not that worried to find it anymore, actually. Thanks anyway.

 

And for photos I guess you're both right. Evernote works great to store references like art and drawings, but sucks terribly for photos because of the EXIF issue. I'm taking another look at both flickr and picasa right now, maybe they will be a better solution.

 

Thank you both for your help!

[sh.Preston 1]

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/31270-exporting-to-html-via-the-command-line/?p=219153

 

Some discussion about using Applescript to accomplish this. I'd suggest making a Service in Automator.