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Evernote Confirms a Serious Bug Caused Data Loss For Some Mac Users (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the missing-data dept.

Evernote has sent an email to users warning of a serious bug "in some versions of Evernote for Mac that can cause images and other attachments to be deleted from a note under specific conditions." The company claims only "a small number of people" are affected, but those who have received the email will need to update their Mac app as soon as possible. The glitch occurs in the September version of the software, and less frequently in the versions released since June. TechCrunch reports: In these applications, certain sequences of events can cause an image or other attachments to be deleted from notes without warning, but text is not affected. For example, the bug can be triggered by skimming quickly through a large number of notes, Evernote says. The email explains that once the company identified the problem, it worked quickly to implement a solution and attempted to restore all lost data. The issue was under discussion in Evernote's forums earlier this month. For heavy Evernote users, the bug could have a major impact. One user in the forums posted that they had 20,000 notes in their Evernote account, as part of their PhD research. Hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of their notes may have now become corrupted, according to their post. Unfortunately for some affected users, data recovery was not possible through automated means, the company's email stated. Instead, Evernote is advising those users who are missing attachments to use Evernote's note history feature in Evernote Premium to try to recover the missing data.

6 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Host Your Own Damn Files by darkain · · Score: 2

    Repeat after me: HOST YOUR OWN DAMN FILES. Put them on a good quality local server with ZFS backed storage. Set up automated snapshots. Then setup automated ZFS send/recv to another off-set (geographically diverse, so at least a few hundred miles away) server.

    When files are borkt locally, just pull em out of your snapshots, or just entirely revert to a snapshot. Local server is borkt? Just pull the contents from the remote server. For an added bonus, sync to multiple remote locations, especially because co-location hosting and bandwidth is so damn cheap now.

    1. Re:Host Your Own Damn Files by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      "...you wanna make this shit as simple as possible? Just install FreeNAS. It has all this built in. "

      So that next time you have a fire or a breakin, you will have lost EVERYTHING.

  2. Clumsy Response from Evernote by Sir+Holo · · Score: 2

    Evernote is advising those users who are missing attachments to use Evernote's note history feature in Evernote Premium to try to recover the missing data.

    Huh?

    You want these people to buy a more expensive edition of your software – as the solution for your main product failing?

    Tone-deaf.

    1. Re:Clumsy Response from Evernote by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      Huh?

      You want these people to buy a more expensive edition of your software – as the solution for your main product failing?

      Tone-deaf.

      Fortunately, several weeks ago there was an OS X update to the stock Notes application that has the same essential features as Evernote, including being able to sync to multiple computers and devices. When Evernote restricted its free version to one machine, I moved over to Notes. Now it appears that I acted at the right time.

    2. Re:Clumsy Response from Evernote by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2

      The Evernote free version actually restricts you to two nodes, not one. It triggered me to abandon Evernote. And the cool new Apple trick was the ability to share notes between users. Apple Notes synced over iCloud for a while. The other cool thing is local notes. Evernote free was always cloud based. If you need a local note, you had to pay premium. Apple Notes is save locally then update the cloud version. So you always have the note locally. Great for notes for the Airport where WiFi is expensive and you don't get great signal from all the metal.

      macOS notes also has a filter to import the Evernote XML export formal.

  3. They're trying to get rid of free users.... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2

    .... this will certainly help :)

    So, Evernote has massive competition for Apple iOS/macOS Notes, Google Keep, MS OneNote, even DropBox paper.
    So the thought seems to be, lets get rid of all these non-paying folks, lets concentrate on the much smaller group of paying folks. For the free tier, they've reduced the number of hosts you can access this from.

    I personally have migrated all my notes away from Evernote to Apple Notes. macOS notes has added an import filter specifically for the Evernote XML export. Was pretty easy.