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Still "living in the OneNote cache"

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Last week when my tablet died I lost the hard drive which held the most important notebook I use in my day to day work.  I was fortunate enough to have shared the notebook and connected to it from a second machine.  Here's what I immediately did to ensure I would not lose my data.

1. Went to the machine that had the notebook open (but not able to sync).
2. Right clicked the notebook and selected Save As...
3. Saved the notebook as a .ONEPKG file.  This gives me an accurate snapshot of the existing content, and I can reinstall the notebook anywhere I want from this file.  It does not get updated if I change the contents, though - I would need to save it as a ONEPKG file if I altered anything.

Then I had a choice of what to do.  I could have moved the notebook to a temporary location (like a USB drive) and keep using it from the drive.  If I wasn't interested in testing this scenario, this is what I would have done (and it IS what I would recommend my friends to do).  The data is kept, is usable, and work continues more or less as usual in the face of hardware failure.

What I did instead was make the leap of faith that the temporary cache I have of the live notebook will work perfectly while the hardware is in the shop.  I have kept using the notebook offline, making changes, updating information and generally acting as if nothing had happened.  I also keep a good record of all the changes I make.  When the old computer gets back, I'll plug it into the network and sync the notebook changes I have made to it.  I expect no problems.  If there are problems, I'll be able to go back to my changes to see what went wrong, enter a bug if needed or figure out how I messed up along the way.

The leap of faith I'm taking is that my current hard drive which has the offline copy of the notebook (the cached copy) won't fail, that I won't delete my cache, that the file won't get corrupted and that my hard drive in the shop doesn't get wiped while there.  If it does get wiped, then I'll just move the offline notebook to a new location when it gets back, and all my testing, tracking of changes and such are irrelevant.  We'll see, and I'll keep you updated.

  I really want that hard drive to come back intact.  I hadn't synced in a day or two, and noticed some information on it I hadn't saved anywhere else.  I hate re-learning the lesson of always having current backups.

Questions, concerns, comments and criticism always welcome,

John

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2008
    I had a hard drive failure ( actually a corrupted boot record) last week. I was fortunate enough to be able to get back my data ( half a semester's worth of notes !!!) after spending 6 hrs fighting with my hard drive. Maybe the OneNote team should collaborate with Windows Live Space Team to give the users the option of automatically backing up their notebooks online ( for those of us who aren't fortunate enough to have a cache in another computer :) ) .

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2008
    If I were you I'd make a daily backup of the cache itself to a usb drive.  And make another backup copy of the cache right before syncing with the old notebook files.   The previous respondent had a good idea about online backups, but users could also do this themselves, with an inexpensive usb drive.  This is ALWAYS worth the tiny expense (use it to back up all your valuable pictures and music, too!).  

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2008
    the trouble with backing up manually is well I do it for a week and then i get complacent. As John put it, I hate having to relearn the lessons of having a current backup.  After my hard drive crashed, I did follow your suggestion of moving it to a USB drive and one note has a great feature for syncing. I simply shared the notebook on my USB drive and now  I just need to plug in the USB drive from time to time to have my notebooks backed up :). Its not as good as automatic online backup but it works  - I don't have to manually copy files at least :)

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    If you use the onenote sync feature with a USB drive, is ANYTHING being backed up between times sync occurs?  Does the software do regular section/directory backups while you are offline?  I was afraid to set things up this way because I thought this was the case. I haven't tried it, though. I treat the "regular" onenote backups as "I bet I'll delete a section tomorrow" backup, and I do a backup of the "OneNote Notebooks" directory as "I bet my computer will catch fire tomorrow" backup (for this one I use xcopy and a *.bat file -- how's that for old tech!)

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    Yes, the backups still occur according to the setting in Tools | Options | Backup.  I verified this today - good question, though.  It made me worry a little, but at least I have some extra backups if I need them.   Xcopy with bat files is still effective.  It's easy, and once you set it up backing up is just a double click.  Short of setting a windows task to run every night at 1AM and leaving your computer on, I can't think of a simpler system.

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2008
    @Anirudh Saraf, officelive.com and home.live.com both already have this capability. I have a couple of oneNote collections that I share between home and work, using officelive.com as the remote shared location. Also, home.live.com has a utility that will automatically backup your documents.