Submitted by WayneK on 2022/12/20 00:58

I just lost most of the work I did today and it appears to be permanently gone.

1) Dragged a link to InfoQube from Firefox.  InfoQube locked up (very common problem that happens more than once every day).

2) At least two items were lost.  These items contained the bulk of my work for the day.  Both items included the date in the title (Mon 12/19/22).

3) I searched for "Mon 12/19/22"  Neither item was found.  I also searched for all items created the past week and manually reviewed these carefully.  The two items were missing there also.  So they're gone from the file, not just missing from the grid.

4) I have back up set to every 10 minutes but when I looked at my backup files there was only a single back up file remaining for the entire day.  It appears that when the date rolls over at midnight, it deletes all your backups for that day except one.  In this case, the one remaining back up file was also missing these items.  And since no other back up files for the day are left, it appears my work for the day is lost.

What's even more dismaying is that these are just two items that happened to be the focus of my work for the day, therefore I noticed they were gone.  There is no way of knowing how many other items have been lost during the repeated lock ups.

I just changed the option for deleting back-up files from 1 to 2 days.  I thought 1 day meant 24 hours but the deletions are done at the next passing of midnight.  If your problem occurs during the midnight crossover, you have no backup protection (as in this case).

Really discouraged at this point.  Trying to think of something else I could try.

Wayne

Win 10, 121Pre3

Comments

Hi Wayne,

Quite a new things in the post. First, I'm sorry if you're having issues, we'll try to get/find your information

  1. If drag-drop causes lockup, I should be looking into it. I just about always use copy / paste instead (mostly because I use IQ in admin mode). Copy / paste works flawlessly
  2. To search for items, the best way is to use the Journal grid. Filter on the desired day and see if the items are there
  3. Currently, the timed backups are deleted. I'll change to send them to the recycle bin instead. To retrieve your files, there are free "undelete" tools. Plus Windows has built-in feature. Search the store for Windows File Recovery
  4. The backup scheme I use is to enable Dropbox sync. It has all the advantages of timed backups and it is fast. See 1. Synchronization between computers using Dropbox

HTH !

Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer

1) I've brought up the drag-drop lock up issue before and you looked into it.  I think you made some changes but it didn't help in my case.  I'll switch to copy/paste.  The reason I haven't been using it is that dragging is so much more convenient.  It automatically captures the link address and the article title instead of having to manually copy/paste both.

2) That's exactly what I'm using: the journal grid with filter set to items created the past 7 days.

3) I was going to suggest this.  If files are deleted to the recycle bin, it provides an extra layer of back up and you can choose to undelete and keep extra copies of backups.  Another alternative would be to provide an option to permanently keep x number of backups for each day.  For example, if you set permanent backups to 4 per day, the program would keep 4 backup files roughly evenly spaced in time.

4) Yes, I'm going to add another layer of backup.

The thing that really worries me is that items can disappear without any way to know that they're gone unless it's something prominent that you were just working on.  In most cases the items just lose their grid assignments.  They're not really gone but they're functionally deleted because they're no longer in a grid where they can be found and you don't even know that they're missing.  I'm still trying to think of a way to cover this.  In one grid, i've assigned sequence numbers to all the TLI's so I can see if something has been removed.

Thanks for your help,

Wayne

 

Hi Wayne,

  1. This should help: 

    1. New: Grid: Paste: If the URL field is empty and the clipboard contains 1 or more URLs, the URLs will be copied to the URL field
    2. New: URL field: Supports multiple URLs, Enter | separated list of URLs
  2. OK
  3. Were you able to undelete your backups (and find the missing items)
  4. Good
  5. Good point. I don't thing I've seen missing items before... I could add a command to compare tao IQBases and report changes: items added, items deleted, text changes). Interested ?

Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer

1. Thanks.  That sounds good.

3.  Deleted back up files don't go to the recycle bin.  You said you were thinking about making a change so they DO go to the recycle bin, and I agreed that was a good idea.  I'm trying to use file recovery software right now.

5. I just confirmed my concern: I found an item that was completely deleted from the database between Dec 7 and Dec 8 and I didn't know it was missing.  I only discovered it because in this grid I have assigned sequence numbers to all the top-level items.  I can manually scan this sequence to see if any items are missing, and that's how I discovered it.

Recovering a missing item in a case like this is a pain because you have to open and manually search file after file until you find the one that has the last version of the missing item.  It wasn't too bad just now because I lost it recently, but it would a monumental task if you find you lost something 6 months ago.

So my sequence number system is, I think, a decent tool for monitoring the loss of top-level items.  I'm trusting that the deletion of subitems is not an issue.

Wayne

 

Update: I tried to recover the files using two recovery programs (Recuva and Puran).  Both found the same 19 backup files.  Oddly, they were all from the same day (Dec 13).  No trace of the one I'm looking for (Dec 19).  Should have done this last night but for some reason I didn't think of it.

1. Good; I have been wondering about this in another post (Why Outlook links pastes ads the URL to the URL field but not webpage links)
2. A comparison between two IQbases may be very useful. Not urgent, but I have sometimes longed for this in Ecco (but of course not possible there)

Forgot to reply:

5. Yes, I'd be interested in that.

How about my suggestion for the option to retain more than 1 backup per day?  Right now, you can lose much of a day's work (as I did) with a single back up per day.

Yes, sending the deleted files to the recycle bin does allow you to retain multiple backups a day, but it requires manual monitoring to go in and undelete several backups every day. 

It would be simpler if InfoQube would automatically retain, say, 4 copies a day spread through the day.  That would allow you to recover a good chunk of a day's work no matter when the issue occurred.

This can probably be done with backup software, so it's not critical.  But still maybe useful?

Wayne

I have set IQ to auto-backup every 10 min and then delete after 10 days. Of course, it only backs up when IQ and the PC is running. On 12/23/22, for example, I have 48 copies, so they were not deleted for me.

(On 12/25, however, I have no copies. Not sure why, as I think IQ was running then - but I am not 100% sure)

Update:  I found the missing items.  They were not lost from the file but were functionally lost because they were mis-titled with the wrong date (therefore searches failed to find them) and were misplaced under an unrelated parent.

The misplacement is a common mistake I make because I use Win-arrow to expand outlines and Alt-arrow to move items through outline levels.  The keys are right next to each so I'm constantly moving items underneath other items by mistake.  99% of the time I catch this immediately.

In this case, there was a crash and items were lost from the grid, which is a real and persistent problem.  I quickly recovered these items but when I did an overall check of my log entries I noticed the "missing" items and and was unable to find them because of the combination of wrong title and wrong location.

I apologize for mistakenly saying the items were lost from the database.  I thought I'd done enough searching to be sure they were gone, but I was wrong.

I'm acutely aware that whenever I post what I think is a bug, there's a chance that I'm in the wrong.  In this case, I do still have a problem with lock up's and items losing grid assignments, but I don't have a problem with lost data.

One good thing out of this, for me, is recognizing the need to improve my back-up system.

Wayne

  1. So happy to hear the items were not lost. I could not explain how this could happen, so to know it didn't is reassuring
  2. Ctrl+Space and Ctrl+arrows are also a convenient shortcut to expand / collapse. Perhaps this would cause less user errors than Win+arrows
  3. In a recent update, a bug was found that could cause items to not be assigned to a grid when they should. Perhaps upgrade
  4. Thanks for being so candid about bug reporting. As a developer, one knows that user error (aka code 18) can happen, but we must first confirm that the software is indeed at fault

Happy holidays

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