Still "living in the OneNote cache"
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