Hello,

I have tried out the latest version of AllMyNotes and found troubling issues with data file sizes. I saw this same type of issue in an earlier release, but didn't see any real explanation for the behavior.

Issue

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I have 20 folders and about the same number of notes. My file size is 100mb.

Here's how I got there

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I imported a bunch of notes from a different product. The file size of that product was 5mb (which included much more than notes).

The data file went from about 1mb to 100mb.

I didn't like how I imported them, so I deleted them.

I then cleared the recycle bin.

The data file remained at 100mb.

The file properties invoked from AllMyNotes also showed the notes and folder counts as they were after the import.

I optimized and the file size remained at 100mb.

I closed out and restarted and the file size remained at 100mb.

Granted, this is a fringe scenario. But it does bring me concern as to how information is being stored. It's a pain to see dozens of mb transfers when trying to sync between two computers.

Any ideas on why this behavior exists?

cc

"cautiouschaos" wrote:I imported a bunch of notes from a different product. The file size of that product was 5mb (which included much more than notes).

The data file went from about 1mb to 100mb.

....

Any ideas on why this behavior exists?

Definitely, this is not a typical cause. If your data was originally 5mp, in AllMyNotes it should be close to that size too.

First thing I'd like to look in to - which app version you are using? Cause older version of AllMyNotes where storing images uncompressed, which could explain the size issue. Effectively from version 2.40 we are storing images in compressed (.png) format, which saves a lot of disk space (up to x20 times). If you are using older version, make sure to install current version, but note: new version will not convert images to compressed format automatically, it happens only for newly created notes. You can Cut-Paste notes to save them in compressed format.

If the issue is not in app version... try to search for big notes in AllMyNotes. For this you can sort your notes by size, and see, possibly there is one or two big notes? Take a look in to them. It may be that you have big file attachments attached to them, or something like that.

There are a couple of things I could add:

1. The data file I was using was from data I stored in an older version (prior to 2.4).

2. The version of the program I am using is 2.46.

3. The extracts that I performed from the previous tool were in rtf format. As is often the case, the files were quite large for limited content.

4. I created a new data file under 2.46.

5. I imported and deleted the same content previously multiple times and in multiple ways. The data file size reflected the actions correctly.

6. I took special notice of the large (1mb+) RTF files. After import, they were 50% reduced in size, but missing images.

7. I re-exported those same files into HTML format. After import, they were reduced in size by 75% and included the images.

That leads me to suspect:

1. This might have been an issue with a) older versioned data file used with b) newer versioned software.

2. RTF files could be part of the culprit for larger file size by nature that they are often bloated.

BTW the sort by size was very nice. Made this whole evaluation helpful. I will keep trying this out today as I port over my notes from old program to new. If anything looks funny, I'll let you know.

Thanks for the pointers!

cc

Okay, something is definitely not right. Here's the scenario:

1. I have one note in AllMyNotes that is 3.03MB in size.

2. It is comprised of text with no visual formatting, tables, or images.

3. I copied the text from AllMyNotes into TreeDBNotes. It measured 37,000 words and 233,000 characters.

4. I copied the text from AllMyNotes into Word. It measured the same.

5. My TreeDBNotes file size increased by < 200kb.

5. I saved the document in Word as a Word .docx file. The file size was 128kb.

6. I saved the document in Word as an RTF file. The file size was 314kb.

So, AllMyNotes measures in at 3.03MB with all these other methods measuring in at a small fraction. And this is after any file optimizing was invoked in AllMyNotes.

Does any of this make sense?

cc

Ok, just tried it on my end. Created 200Kb long plain text file. Then copied it to AMN (AllMyNotes). As result the .ddb file got 1.41Mb in size. Why is it bigger? First of all, AllMyNotes stores texts in Unicode format, which allows better support of non-English characters. Unicode occupies x2 more of disk space. Then AMN add some extra formatting, it also stores 2 copies of data - one in HTML-formatted format, and another one is in plain Unicode text. Plain text greatly speeds up the search across all notes, and, we are using it to restore data in case for case of partial file corruption. And, the database engine pre-allocates ~20-30% of extra disk space to speedup future note increase in size so that there is no more need to resize the file and re-structure file mapping.

Now let's compute. Let's presume html formatting takes extra 30% of file size... So it's like...

200 Kb x 2 (Unicode) = 400 Kb of plain Unicode text

400 Kb + 30% = 520 Kb for HTML-formatted text

(400 Kb + 520 Kb) + 30% (of pre-allocation for DB) = ~1.2Mb

That's my approximate calculations to illustrate how it works. Additionally to what's illustrated above AllMyNotes stores many database hash tables, file maps, and other things to speed up loading and search. Yet cannot say why it's 3Mb for you, must be a reason for that, but hope you got the idea...

P.S. Also please see this topic, it's related - http://www.vladonai.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19&p=36

Thanks - that explains quite a bit. I hadn't realized that there was that number of safeguards sitting behind the scenes. I'm going to keep moving forward. At least now I have a good explanation why this is happening. Maybe I can make some changes to what I am storing.

Thank you,

cc