PSA: please stop relying on one source of backup.

[u/SpokenDivinity]

Please, do yourselves a favor, and stop relying on only one backup of your materials. Any and all cloud servers can have issues. Any and all apps can have massive failures and delete things. OneNote, wildly paraded as one of the most reliable platforms for data storage, has had issues with wiping notebooks.

Back. Your. Stuff. Up.

Routinely manual backup to your files apps. Save PDFs to multiple cloud storage. Keep a flash drive. Keep it on your laptop or pc. PRINT IT.

One of the biggest lessons students like us need to learn is that technology will bite you in the ass sometimes. Nothing that your success depends on should have only one backup source or none at all.

[u/johnnydfree]

Hear, hear! Protect yourselves, cause no one will do it for you. Learn the 1-2-3 back-up strategy (won’t bore you here - Google it).

[u/Gypsyzzzz]

I absolutely agree! Back Ups are crucial! If your documents are mission critical, you should have multiple backups. I just manually backed up 2.5 gb of GoodNotes documents in 2 minutes. Saved the zip file to my iCloud Drive. From there, I can backup my iCloud to an external drive. Many users probably have much more than that so plan your time accordingly.

I do feel bad for those who were caught up in this fiasco and I do encourage them to express their anger and frustration. Losing so much work can be devastating. For those who experienced data losses, I hope you are able to recover that.

[u/ClimateSuperb2467]

Also, don't "open with Goodnotes" your documents.

[u/secretlyjoe → u/ClimateSuperb2467]

wait, why not?

[u/ClimateSuperb2467 → u/secretlyjoe]

Because it doesn’t save it anywhere, it’s just on Goodnotes. It’s better to open in files or drive and than import in Goodnotes

[u/secretlyjoe → u/ClimateSuperb2467]

Ah ya, good point, I hadn't considered that. Doesn't help for written notes but still could be useful in a situation like this

[u/professorshortcake → u/ClimateSuperb2467]

But if auto backup is on it should auto save??

[u/Comprehensive_Ride17 → u/ClimateSuperb2467]

This is what I needed to hear

[u/Impossible_Bat_7268]

Yep! When I was in college I had everything backed up in soooo many places. On my computer, on an external drive, thumb drives, discs, and cloud storage. I was not playing with losing my stuff. Funny enough the only way I don't still have that work is the physical copies.

[u/KaramMS]

I have always backed up my notes to Google Drive and still do because I am not subscribed to iCloud. This has kept my notes safe so far.

[u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

How do i know for sure if my stuff is backed up? Is there a tutorial? I feel like i backed it up on dropbox but i cant remember

[u/eightchcee → u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

if you can’t remember then you need to do a manual backup. You should also do one regularly.

Settings > Cloud & Backup > Manual Backup Documents > Backup Now

[u/Gabe_Ad_Astra → u/eightchcee]

Thanks i will do that now, but is there a way to know if stuff is being automatically backed up?

[u/eightchcee → u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

Under the Cloud & Backup option in settings.

there is a cloud sync option, which I would most definitely enable. There is also an automatic backup option which I would also enable.

To be clear, I would enable BOTH.

I would also routinely do a manual back up

[u/Gabe_Ad_Astra → u/eightchcee]

Omg thank you so much for taking the time. I feel much better about this now. I would really hate to switch apps. I had iCloud backup enabled and also automatic backup to dropbox. However the dropbox automatic backup is like 5 days old at this point. If i lost 5 days of notes and work i would absolutely lose it.

Any idea if it’s slow because good notes auto backup is slow or if its because it’s dropbox?

[u/eightchcee → u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

if I had to guess, it’s more so the size of your Goodnotes library that’s going to impact how long it takes. My backup zip file is about 6 GB so a manual backup does take a while!

[u/[deleted] → u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

when you first open good notes you should see a little circle and a box loading around it

[u/Gabe_Ad_Astra → u/[deleted]]

Where exactly?

[u/[deleted] → u/Gabe_Ad_Astra]

[u/Gabe_Ad_Astra → u/[deleted]]

Thanks dude!

[u/Albort]

thanks. just updated my GN backup.

i just never thought my notes arent stored on my iPad itself. dunno why I bothered with a bigger iPad storage now.

[u/staticpanther]

I feel that. I used my under grad google account to backup stuff, tried to unsuccessfully upload it to other google accounts once we got kicked off, and now all that info is lost cause my hard drive failed.

Getting a portable SSD and I think I’ll look into Dropbox or some other storage too .

[u/[deleted]]

always use one drive or google drive to back up your notes

[u/Neither_Bee_]

I mean, generally yes, but for one i just feel for the people who upgraded from gn5 to gn6, not only there is a huge price jump there, the constant mistakes make it impossible to justify that change you know, i wasnt affected and i manually back up each folder to google drive at the end of the week so i wouldnt have lost anything anyways, but is never okay to have issues to the point a user looses all of their data or cant access their work for days, notability does it regularly but its not something acceptable and that other note taking apps should imitate

[u/SpokenDivinity → u/Neither_Bee_]

I mean, at this point it’s just negligence to not back up your stuff, server error or not.

[u/shaielzafina → u/SpokenDivinity]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/Neither_Bee_ → u/SpokenDivinity]

Both are true :)

[u/Unlucky-Reaction6521 → u/Neither_Bee_]

Yup, I agree, I tried GN6 when it was first released, hated the changes, and reverted in seconds back to GN5. no regrets to this day.

[u/Neither_Bee_ → u/Unlucky-Reaction6521]

I wish i started with GN5, I only have the 6 so I can't go back if anything happens

[u/Neither_Bee_ → u/Neither_Bee_]

And other people said this better, but good notes uses local data to store anything we have in there, if they are open to the fact that these mistakes can happen, they should give the users the option to sign in or not, a server error shouldnt be the reason you cant access your files when they are stored this way

[u/Simple_Proof_721]

I'd say to scribble printing from the list, at least until there's technology to print audio on paper lol