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ttscoff / nv

MultiMarkdown version of Notational Velocity with Markdown editing features and preview
http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Interim Notes do not survive Time Machine restore in ~/Library/Caches/ #339

Open apanagar opened 9 years ago

apanagar commented 9 years ago

There may also be other cases where the notes many not survive, such as upgrading the OS.

According to the post, http://brettterpstra.com/2013/06/08/nvalt2.2b106/, • Interim note-changes is now in ~/Library/Caches/ where it belongs. This fix improve some Dropbox sync issues

~/Library/Caches/ will not survive a Time Machine restore by default because that directory is excluded by default, which is described here (and I have verified to be the case) http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/131399/what-folders-can-be-safely-excluded-from-time-machine-backup

I seldom shutdown my machine, so in my case (fortunately no irreparable harm done) I lose about 2 months of notes in a Time Machine restore to the night before.

juranta commented 9 years ago

That's one reason why it's a good idea to turn make nvALT write notes on disk as plain text files from settings. With this setting on, nvALT writes each note to disk almost immediately as plain text. This is useful as backup, as well as many other reasons. To quite easily have it even more secure, you can for instance move this plain text format notes directory to Dropbox (which keeps a history of notes). I also have the whole notes directory in Git, so I have both history and kind of a backup of my notes, and I'd easily notice if some notes have disappeared. Sometimes I've just pressed some wrong key from some device and accidentally deleted a file without noticing it immediately.

BTW, I currently have also gone back to using Dropbox and have not experienced further issues with disappearing notes.

elasticthreads commented 9 years ago

the name "Interim Notes" is not the most accurate. This file is really just a cache of unsaved edits you make as you write. But all these changes are frequently "saved" to the "Notes & Settings" file in your notes folder (not the "/Caches/" folder), as well as separate text files if you have that preference turned on. This is why we chose the /Caches/ folder as a good location for the file. It's a cache.

There's no way that Interim Notes file had 2 months of unsaved edits to it. I don't think you'd lose even a few hours of unsaved changes. Has nvALT been up and running (and your machine constantly running) for 2 months straight? I'd need more detail about your machine, OS, and nvALT settings to know how you lost 2 months of notes in a time machine restore. But its not because of the "Interim Notes" file.

apanagar commented 9 years ago

Cool, good to know. Yes, nvAlt has been running for 2 months straight. I'm not sure my machine info would be useful at this point since I'm now upgraded to Yosemite and a lot of things have changed. I still have Time machine backups (Mavericks) of the file system prior to upgrade. Let me know if there's something I can provide you with that would be helpful.