Do back everything up: Installing 2.1 on my Mac deleted all my cards

[Andrew Smith]

2,700 flashcards down the drain because the new application deleted the entire library folder Mnemosyne and everything in it. I reinstalled 1.2.0 which recreated the folder in my library but it was empty because it was totally destroyed.

Three years of work, down the tubes.

[George Wade]

Don't do anything until you get expert instructions; except disclosing your OS, perhaps... There are utilities that get zombies back from the grave, after all, if the worst has happened.

George

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 3:18 PM, George Wade <wadege...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't do anything until you get expert instructions; except disclosing your OS, perhaps... There are utilities that get zombies back from the grave, after all, if the worst has happened.

And let this be a lesson to other people: you always have 1 less
backup than you think you do, and if you have no backups at all, *your
data doesn't exist*.

This fellow says he has lost 3 years of work. Does an external hard
drive and weekly backups cost more or less than 3 years of work?

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

[Murat Sincan]

I can't imagine what I would do if I had lost >11.000 cards that took me >3 years to put together. I keep my 1.2 database in dropbox and that way I get free syncing between my computers and backups with multiple versions. I hope this helps others. 

Murat 

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Andrew Smith <adsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

2,700 flashcards down the drain because the new application deleted the entire library folder Mnemosyne and everything in it. I reinstalled 1.2.0 which recreated the folder in my library but it was empty because it was totally destroyed.

Three years of work, down the tubes.

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Dr.Murat Sincan
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[Gnome]

What exactly happened?

Are you running windows? Are you sure there is no database files at "C:\Users\<your user name>\Application Data\Mnemosyne" or "C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mnemosyne"?

[George Wade]

Gnome — Now I look at Andrew's subject line I see "On my Mac."  That gives a clue; possibly a vital one.

Andrew —  Please let me ask, politely, if you have been able to follow the instructions to search your hard disc from October 22nd ?

If not, it may be possible to guide you;  after all Mac users on a Linux / Win list are in a foreign country:  if not Alien Galaxy ...

George

[Peter Bienstman]

Quoting George Wade <wadege...@gmail.com>:

> Andrew ? Please let me ask, politely, if you have been able to

> follow the instructions to search your hard disc from October 22nd ?

Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, before upgrade your 1.x data should
have been copied to ~/home/Mnemosyne1, so it should still be there
intact.

Peter

[Patrick Kenny]

Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, before upgrade your 1.x data should  
have been copied to ~/home/Mnemosyne1, so it should still be there  
intact.

When I tested this on my Mac, Mnemosyne 2 properly moved the data to a backup folder.  If you can't find it in ~/home/Mnemosyne1, you may also check ~/Application Support/Mnemosyne, etc.

Patrick 

[Peter Bienstman]

Actually, what I will do for the next version is showing a popup where
Mnemosyne backed up your old 1.x data, that should make it even easier.

(In terms of code, it's ~/Library/Mnemosyne_1 where ~ is whatever the OS
expands your home directory to)

Cheers,

Peter

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Peter Bienstman
Ghent University, Dept. of Information Technology
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tel: +32 9 264 34 46, fax: +32 9 264 35 93
WWW: http://photonics.intec.UGent.be
email: Peter.B...@UGent.be

[Oisín]

If for some reason, the backup directory was not writeable (e.g. it was a normal file rather than a directory, or the permissions were wrong) would the upgrade process have aborted?

But in any case, I really can't stress enough how important it is to back up your important files regularly. Of course, everyone knows this, but we often don't _do_ it until we've been burned at least once. In my case, it was the irretrievable loss of many photos and almost all videos of our daughter's first 6 months or so of life. We can't go back in time and make those videos again...

Given how cheap and fast a 1TB (or bigger) external drive is now, and the existence of decent incremental backup software, it's even worth just plugging it in once a week or so to have a reasonable safeguard against losing everything (even stuff you "have" on the cloud - you never know).

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[Peter Bienstman]

On 11/08/2012 12:28 PM, Ois�n wrote:
> If for some reason, the backup directory was not writeable (e.g. it was
> a normal file rather than a directory, or the permissions were wrong)
> would the upgrade process have aborted?

In that case, Python should have thrown an exception...

Peter

[Ayesha Nicole]

I am sorry to hear of your data loss!  

Since I am rather new to using Mnemosyne, how do I back up my data regularly?  And how often is recommended?  

Thank you.

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Peter Bienstman <Peter.B...@ugent.be> wrote:

Peter

[Andrew Smith]

I found my cards. Thank you for your help.

I was clicking "Open" rather than "Import," but I still cannot figure out why I was unable to find the cards (and still can't) searching from any finder box other than the one that pops up if I click "Import" when I have Mnemosyne open.

On my typical Finder window or if I click "Open" from Mnemosyne or any other program, if I click "Andrew's Mac" and then "Library" there is no "Mnemosyne"  folder and no "Mnemosyne1" folder. What's more, if I search for .mem files on my computer via Spotlight or the Finder search, it says I don't have any such files. Nor can it find the files if I search for text that I know to appear in the cards themselves.

If, however, I click "Import" with the program, I get what appears to be an identical finder box, but in this one, my "Library" folder has subfolders entitled both Mnemosyne and Mnemosyne1. I find that very confusing. Indeed, I find everything about how computers organize information internally confusing, but I found this particularly so.

I don't understand why there is no longer a program like Google desktop that easily and unerringly finds whatever you have ever seen on your computer, be it on the machine itself on online.

Anyway, thank you again. And I will make sure to back this up regularly, just in case I do not get so lucky next time.

Andrew

On Thursday, November 8, 2012 5:39:21 AM UTC-5, Peter Bienstman wrote:

Actually, what I will do for the next version is showing a popup where
Mnemosyne backed up your old 1.x data, that should make it even easier.

(In terms of code, it's ~/Library/Mnemosyne_1 where ~ is whatever the OS
expands your home directory to)

Cheers,

Peter

On 11/08/2012 10:37 AM, Patrick Kenny wrote:
>     Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, before upgrade your 1.x data should
>     have been copied to ~/home/Mnemosyne1, so it should still be there
>     intact.
>
>
> When I tested this on my Mac, Mnemosyne 2 properly moved the data to a
> backup folder.  If you can't find it in ~/home/Mnemosyne1, you may also
> check ~/Application Support/Mnemosyne, etc.
>
>
> Patrick
>
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[Andrew Smith]

I found my cards. Thank you for your help.

I was clicking "Open" rather than "Import," but I still cannot figure out why I was unable to find the cards (and still can't) searching from any finder box other than the one that pops up if I click "Import" when I have Mnemosyne open.

On my typical Finder window or if I click "Open" from Mnemosyne or any other program, if I click "Andrew's Mac" and then "Library" there is no "Mnemosyne"  folder and no "Mnemosyne1" folder. What's more, if I search for .mem files on my computer via Spotlight or the Finder search, it says I don't have any such files. Nor can it find the files if I search for text that I know to appear in the cards themselves.

If, however, I click "Import" with the program, I get what appears to be an identical finder box, but in this one, my "Library" folder has subfolders entitled both Mnemosyne and Mnemosyne1. I find that very confusing. Indeed, I find everything about how computers organize information internally confusing, but I found this particularly so.

I don't understand why there is no longer a program like Google desktop that easily and unerringly finds whatever you have ever seen on your computer, be it on the machine itself on online.

Anyway, thank you again. And I will make sure to back this up regularly, just in case I do not get so lucky next time.

Andrew

[Andrew Smith]

I found my cards. Thank you for your help.

I was clicking "Open" rather than "Import," but I still cannot figure out why I was unable to find the cards (and still can't) searching from any finder box other than the one that pops up if I click "Import" when I have Mnemosyne open.

On my typical Finder window or if I click "Open" from Mnemosyne or any other program, if I click "Andrew's Mac" and then "Library" there is no "Mnemosyne"  folder and no "Mnemosyne1" folder. What's more, if I search for .mem files on my computer via Spotlight or the Finder search, it says I don't have any such files. Nor can it find the files if I search for text that I know to appear in the cards themselves.

If, however, I click "Import" with the program, I get what appears to be an identical finder box, but in this one, my "Library" folder has subfolders entitled both Mnemosyne and Mnemosyne1. I find that very confusing. Indeed, I find everything about how computers organize information internally confusing, but I found this particularly so.

I don't understand why there is no longer a program like Google desktop that easily and unerringly finds whatever you have ever seen on your computer, be it on the machine itself on online.

Anyway, thank you again. And I will make sure to back this up regularly, just in case I do not get so lucky next time.

Andrew

[Peter Bienstman]

Glad you found your cards! I obviously cannot do anything about
confusing searching in OSX itself, but prompted by your ordeal, on OSX
Mnemosyne will now show where it backed up your 1.x cards after upgrade.

Cheers,

Peter

[Peter Bienstman]

Hi,

See here:

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/help/backups.php

Peter

PS: upgrading to Windows 8 fixed the display of kasra's in the Arial
Arabic font. Perhaps your font now shows properly too.