Lost all my collections again, second time in two months

[Bayesian King]

I've saved a collection even today, tonight I've opened SB to save another one and all my collections on the left were gone. Last time it was because of the migration to version 4 that lead me to lose 2 months of collection. This time I have no idea about the cause since I've not done anything particular today. Should I expect to keep loosing collections regularly in the future?

[Jeff -family of- Stapleton]

I've used Session Buddy since 2015 and never lost any saved session (now called "collection") until in the last week or so.  Migrating the v3 database file to v4, the migration tool said on 03-13-2024 when upgrading to v4.0.0, I apparently had 164 collections and 500 history events.   Going back to that day, I only lost 3 months, but I've lost a lot of important research references in those 3 months.  At some point the number of history events that could be saved changed.  I could have sworn that v4.0.2 and maybe v4.0.3 had a maximum number of history events option of 500, but when I lost all of my collections in the last week or so (and noticed it later), I saw that Session Buddy settings had definitely changed from what I had them set to and I saw the history events setting then had an option of 1,000 and 2,000.  But, I'm sure that wasn't there before.  Maybe it changed with v4.0.2 or v4.0.3 and I didn't catch it.

All I know is I had no Windows crashes, no browser crashes, or other issues that I am aware of but somehow I just lost all of my collections out of nowhere.  This is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE.  When you start putting user data at risk and it isn't user-error related, then you better have an explanation.  I know Session Buddy is free, but do NOT produce a product like this and not have some redundancy and internal backups OR certainly make the VERY CLEAR risks known to the user if there are aspects that are out of your control as a developer that could cause this sort of thing.

This is all very concerning and you saying it has now happened twice in two months is not encouraging.

[Session Buddy Support]

Sorry for the slow reply.

Did SB function normally after you noticed the collections were gone? (ie, were you able to save a collection). Was History affected? Did you happen to check the console for errors? Did restarting the browser change anything?

Could you share diagnostics to help us troubleshoot? Go to Settings > Other, click "Save diagnostics", then send the downloaded file to sup...@sessionbuddy.com

Thanks,

Hans

On Fri, Jun 14, 2024 at 5:44 PM Bayesian King <resampli...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've saved a collection even today, tonight I've opened SB to save another one and all my collections on the left were gone. Last time it was because of the migration to version 4 that lead me to lose 2 months of collection. This time I have no idea about the cause since I've not done anything particular today. Should I expect to keep loosing collections regularly in the future?

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[Session Buddy Support]

Sorry for the late reply Jeff.

And I'm sorry this happened. Your situation is regrettable.

While permanent data loss scenarios are rare, it's an unfortunate reality that extension data stored locally is inherently vulnerable. There are both expected and unexpected factors that are outside of the control of extensions that can lead to data wipe or corruption. This is something many extension developers struggle with (SB v3 had the same problem). The ultimate solution is cloud-based storage, but that comes with costs attached.

> I saw that Session Buddy settings had definitely changed from what I had them set to

This would be expected if extension data was completely wiped.

>  This is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE

Agreed 100%.

> you better have an explanation

I've written up an extensive analysis here in response to your post. Hopefully it helps explain the situation and related challenges. Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

> redundancy and internal backups

We are investigating a local redundancy solution and making that our top priority. This sort of thing presents its own challenges and is not a silver bullet, but there is a relatively new technology available in newer versions of Chrome that appears to be a good fit for a relatively simple solution that could significantly mitigate data loss.

> make the VERY CLEAR risks known to the user if there are aspects that are out of your control

Fair point. We've communicated this through the user forum and Chrome Web Store but these have limited reach. Agreed that we need to find an appropriate way to convey this within the app itself.

> [Bayesian King] saying it has now happened twice in two months is not encouraging

To be fair, the two instances are unrelated. The first (migration-related) instance was anticipated and did not involve permanent data loss because we made provisions for it with the migration tool. I only point this out because the majority of recent reports of "data loss" are in fact migration related and easily rectified and may be somewhat skewing perceptions about the true extent of the data reliability problems (not trying to downplay your situation or the critical importance of finding a solution).

Hans

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