Palm Profiles suffering major backup failures (Updated) 137
We at PreCentral receive a lot of tips throughout the day, but more and more over the past few weeks our inbox has been flooding with stories of users having just reset or replaced their webOS phones only to find that their Palm Profile did not back up all their data as promised. If you haven’t experienced this issue you’re in the lucky majority, but it seems the rate of the backup failures is accelerating and spreading.
We do feel your pain - one of our own staff members was hit by this bug and lost all of his contacts, calendar events, memos, and tasks. The only thing that was saved were his apps, which is a small consolation when you’ve just lost hundreds of phone numbers and email addresses accumulated over the years.
While we’re waiting for a third-party backup solution to land, we did some investigating. It turns out that the problem stems from corrupted backups, which is nothing new in the backup industry. Corrupted data happens all the time, but there are always safeguards to ensure that it doesn’t corrupt the system. Usually, that’s a prior backup. The issue is that the Palm Profile doesn’t keep anything other than the most recent backup, corrupted or not. Since your phone doesn’t provide any feedback on backups, even when they end up as corrupted, webOS users have no idea whether or not their backup was successfully completed. That is, until you reset your phone and realize that everything is lost.
Update: Palm has issued an official statement on the situation:
We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device
This has been a problem since almost day one of life with webOS, but it seems to have become more widespread over the past few weeks. At present, with no resolution in sight we cannot in good conscience recommend that you trust your data to Palm’s servers. While we have little choice with tasks and memos (unless you want to pay to sync them through desktop clients like The Missing Sync), your contacts and calendar data should be kept in the cloud with Google or Yahoo.
We understand that there are those that don’t trust the cloud, but thus far Google and Yahoo sync has proven infinitely more reliable than Palm Profile. We also understand that it certainly will not be an easy task transferring all of your data over to Google or Yahoo from the Palm Profile, as the only way to do that is by editing each event and contact individually. For those that have no yet moved to webOS, if you can you should export your data from your phone/desktop client and upload it to Google or Yahoo yourself and skip the potential misery.
Google and Yahoo have the added benefit that you can hop online and check that it was performed properly - something you absolutely cannot do with your mystery-cloaked Palm Profile. For added data redundancy, you can also sync that data down to your desktop computer; check with each system’s respective websites for details.
This is where we normally thank everybody that's sent in the tips, but it would seem a cruel joke to say "thanks!" Instead, we'll say that we're sorry you've had to deal with this and we wish that there was something we could do to help.
137 Comments
It will be a long while before I trust Palm Profile. With Google Contacts, you can export backups of the contacts. That is as good of a backup option as we get now.
Sync Toy 2.0 works perfectly and its free via Microsoft
I was hoping it wasn't just a matter of time... but it was. Poor Palm, this is going to make life a little difficult.
Just like windows system restore, there need to be multiple points of restore available. Ofcourse providing the ability to have a PC backup would be great as well.
I was hit by this. The tech that I dealt with from palm told me the server was down. I knew it was a lie. I was able to restore 10 contacts out of around 90, and 3 of them were sprint support numbers.
same here. all my memos, task and like 20 of my contacts were gone, many were all incomplete..........sucks.
i was also affected & i was also told the severs were down i got 6 contacts back 3 of them were sprint i lost about 300 contacts all my memos, calendar i neva used google now i have a gmail and backup to google it much better because your contacts are actually viewable and editable
lost over 350 contacts... was pissed.. i got back 4 contacts 3 were sprint c.s. palm offered me a touch stone... how does that make up for all the data i lost ... time to get things together palm... i now am using my gmail... and have reactivated my yahoo, so i dont have to ever worry about this again...
Is it really that hard for Palm to create a Hot Sync App for the Pre? It would definitely be nice if the Palm Profile would export to a file we could save at least. Or import into Google/Yahoo/EAS.
Reliance on the cloud is undermining Palm's integrity with professionals. A hybrid system is the best route, until the cloud can truly do everything better; speed, security and reliability.
How does someone "lose hundreds of phone numbers and email addresses accumulated over the years" when the Palm Pre has only been in existence for 6-months?
Transferred to the phone from Palm Desktop, or more likely your OLD phone. That you may not have access to any more...
Then I have to agree that they were stupid to get rid of those sources. I have my Palm Desktop data files for around every year, from the last decade.
If the Pre was their first ever phone, I can see your point. Most people came to webOS from different platforms and had to port their data over from older devices.
If you brought in all your contacts from your previous phone into the Palm Profile. Discarded previous phone. Pre has a melt down. I have hundreds of numbers only on my phone because I never updated Contacts in Yahoo with phone numbers. Now it's different because of synergy. At least now when I get new phone numbers I can put them into Yahoo from my phone to be backed up.
now every phone with "synergy" will be able to use your gmail or yahoo, or whatever service in the future. Palm sort of helped every other smartphone company out there. Pretty cool huh. I know exchange and outlook already existed, but for those that don't use them, this is a really great thing. Now we just have to hope those servers don't crash irreversibly, like with the sidekicks. Hotsync for the pre would be a great thing.
the data..contacts and such, has been transferred to every new phone bought through the years. The Sprint store will usually do it for you.
Happened to me about 2 months ago. I am told they are still working on it but i gave up and switched to Google backup.
Ask for a free touchstone from them (Palm suuport) for the trouble. It worked for me.
OK, i have had a Windows Mobile phone for years and never trusted their backup. I moved to yahoo, hotmail and gmail for backing up my contacts years ago.
Most of us have both now days. so why duplicate data.
Count me in the group that lost all of my Palm Profile contacts. Luckily all my calendar stuff was done through Google. The majority of my contacts were indeed in Google, but all of the ones I transferred from my old phone, or saved to contacts on the phone are gone. I had to web doctor my phone, and upon restore, well they were not restored.
I'm also one of the ones that before doctoring the regular backup didn't work as advertised, and I had to manually update it on a regular basis. I don't know if this plays in to the corrupted data or not.
How do I make it so that the contacts I enter on the phone go to google contacts and not palm profile?
Contacts > Preferences and Accounts > Default Account (set to Google).
Found that. Seems I set it to that after I doctored because it's set to that now. So I should be golden on anything new I put in the phone. Was reluctant to do that. I must have been set to palm profile before. Ugh.
Great tip! I've been using this since day 1! I can't imagine losing all my contacts so I export from google contacts about once a month as well.
+1 Lost all my memos which only resides in Palm Profile :( Even did a manual backup prior to the erase. Just use google gang.
Desktop solution! Palm won't do it so ***k Palm for this one.... now on to the excuses from all the fanatics....
hi, my name is Steve (Hi Steve!) and I was also a victim to my Palm Profile having "Backup Failures". I lost nearly 100 of my contacts info, it did save 9 though. So I guess that's a plus, right? I guess its off to google to store that precious info.
If Dieter or Derek were willing (I kinda doubt it, but maybe), PreCentral could organize a letter-writing campaign to get Palm to provide a desktop sync app.
I like the cloud solution, but I know I'd feel more secure knowing I had backups on my shiny new Windows 7 desktop.
We don't want a "desktop sync" MS-Windows-Only application.
Just write an app that zips everything into a file and plops it on the USB media drive. Then you can copy that file to any device you like with any OS you like and with no special software. Done. Then some other app to restore. It really is not difficult.
Someone is already working on that with homebrew, but it really should be standard....
Yes, it should be standard. SHOULDN'T IT, PALM!?!
How can Palm, Inc. have a mobile OS that doesn't restore your data 100% of the time??
THAT IS A SECURITY RISK!! This affects 100% of users, just like any other security risk. People don't want to compromise the ability to properly backup and restore their data.
This is Palm 101, comin' at ya.
And so long as the Apple guys up top are listening... Please, dear God... TRASH THE CURRENT MEMO APP AND BRING BACK THE *REAL* MEMO APP IN PALM-OS.
The other apps can be improved upon, but NOT the Memo app!! It is trash; put it where it belongs.
AND IF YOU SCREW UP THE RESTORATION OF MY DATA WHILE YOU'RE BUSY FIXING SOME RINGTONE SETTINGS, WELL, I OUGHTA!!!
Maybe I am missing something, but once a contact is a Palm contact the only way to "move" it to a Google contact is manually create a new one. There is no way to change the assignment of the default account of a previously created contact even if the default account is Google and that's just flawed.
Ya, that's my understanding as well.
I've found no way to "move" a contact from Palm Profile
or the ones I synced once, from Outlook, to my
preference which is Google. Am I missing something?
Perhaps that'd be a handy tweak/hack/patch. Something
that can take existing contacts and convert them
from one profile to another, so they'll sync elsewhere
next time.
@notmestl & Daemon,
There is a way to "move" your contacts from Palm Profile to another....it'll suck if you have 1000's of contacts, but it works.
In the menu of a contact, you have a "Send Contact" option and if you choose "via Email" the contact will be attached to a message and you can email it to yourself and import it elsewhere. Sucks? Yeah, but it works.
I think there's a bug in 1.3.1 that makes even this
impossible. Someone reported that you can no longer
import contacts from a .vcf file sent via email.
I just tested it. I sent myself a Contact, then deleted
the old one from Contacts, and tried to re-import from the
email. Clicking on the card.vcf file launches Contacts app,
but then does nothing. I can't get that contact to import.
This reminds me of the Sidekick data debacle!!
Maybe, on a much smaller scale on our part. An entire cloud based backup system failing and screwing over every Sickkick user isn't equal to intermittent corrupted data failures for some Pre/Pixi users.
God forbid that whatever Palm calls their cloud backup system (Microsoft's Danger was the name of the Sidekick cloud backup) fails in the same way that Danger did. Granted, I've begun to double store my numbers in Google, and even by breaking out the good ol' Palm Desktop from time to time, but I know that the majority of people who own phones don't have that kind of time on their hands, not to mention the crowd the Pixi is made for.
And +1 for Drew's desktop syncing utility, +100 if it doesn't take 3 hours like the Palm Desktop did/does.
I usually connect via usb from the Pre to my desktop--copy over all the folders on my Pre. Date it, Save it. About once per week. And when the time comes, just reconnect to the USB and bring everything back over to the Pre. I have used this method twice in dire emergency and everything seemingly came back over to the Pre just fine. I sure hope some genius comes up with an out of the park home run in terms of a backup program and soon!
You have the idea, exactly. So we just need something to automate that- archive/compress the files into a single file and offer it up on the media usb partition. Done. It should be something built into WebOS (both the backup to media partition and restore from media partition).
They could add some checksums for data validity, correct phone, etc.
Palm is setting themselves up for a class action lawsuit. They tell you they are backing up your data, but give you absolutely no control over it and no way to verify it. Having alternate solutions like Google or 3rd party desktop sync doesn't matter if they are not living up to their promise to backup your data "automagically." If they can't do it they shouldn't claim it as a selling point.
I think they need their own cloud version of Palm desktop that lets you view/edit/make local backup copies of your Palm profile data using your desktop browser.
I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Replaced my phone this past Saturday. At first, for my Palm Contacts, I only saw to Sprint numbers, I almost flipped. But, after syncing, they all populated. PHEW! Can't wait for DrewPre's Backup Utility. C'mon Palm. Get with it.
I'm down for a letter writing campaign. Hell, add me to the lawsuit or something. Or just give us contact losers a bunch of free Palm stuff. AND FIX THE PROBLEM!
Remember, while we were all waiting for the Pre to drop, the arguments about whether the Pre needed a desktop sync solution? How secure do those who argued "who needs a desktop when you have the cloud" feel about cloud computing now?
Palm continues to demonstrate it's incompetence. I've been hoping (with less and less belief) that Palm would get it's act together with the Treo, but I think I've given up.
The hardware can't be trusted, the backup capability can't be trusted, and I find it harder and harder to believe the flaws and lack of features in the software will be addressed. Palm certainly makes no commitments to fixing anything. And serious productivity apps are MIA.
Wonder what the new Dell phone will look like?
no excuses, but I set my default for contacts to Google on day one with the Pre. I would guess the only reason Palm even HAS a profile backup is because they figured something was better than nothing for cloud-based backup.
all my calendars and contacts back up to either Google or Exchange and I still have my exported contacts from my trusty 755p on my thumbdrive and my desktop.
relying on just one backup solution is not a good practice.
+1 for Tyndall for thinking ahead!
Same as I did and NO problems here.
Oops, I meant "get its act together with the Pre" not Treo. Sad thing is my old Treo is more capable, more robust, and more trustworthy than this much newer device.
Palm had better hope no celebrities lose data due to the Palm Profile failure. If the media gets hold of this, Palm's dead.
I got burned somewhat when I first got this phone. I assumed (incorrectly of course) that everything on the phone was backed up. It has a freakin backup program that says "your data is backed up automatically every day". Well, doesn't data include things like pictures, music, files......etc. Guess you need to read the fine print.
Anyway, I sync through EAS. I am assuming I'm pretty safe because all of the pertinent info such as contacts, calendar, and e-mail are stored both on my server and in my Outlook file.
I think you should be able to log into Palm and see what they actually have backed up from your phone.
I originally transferred my contacts and calendar info from my Treo 755 to Google and onto my Palm Pre and it made my Pre bug out. It would drop calls, the network bars would disappear, the EV would disappear, it would get hot looking for the signal and of course the battery would drain in 3 hours. I went through 3 Palm Pres, many trips to the sprint store, hours on the phone with all sorts of techies through Sprints Customer Service and each phone had the same problem. I told them over and over that I thought my Google backup maybe corrupted and that it may be the reason for my Pre to bug out. They though I didn't have a clear signal. I live in N.Y.C. and always had a Sprint phone since 1996 and I never had a problem with reception. I gave up arguing with them and decided to start all over and transfer my contacts to Palm. I do hate not being able to see them on the computer. In my business I use my calendar a lot to schedules appointments with my clients. I have over 1300 contacts. After reading this article I'm worried and I'm thinking about switching back to google or yahoo. Maybe even using The Missing Sync. If I switch it to Google or Yahoo am I going to get multiple contacts on my phone? Will my Pre act up again? And how do I switch it back. I've added a lot of new contacts since I bought my phone in June. What should I do. Help anybody Please!!!!!
Yea, I was also a victim. Thankfully I use google contacts. So my numbers were safe, but i lost all my precious memos. I'm thinking of switching to Evernote. It's backed up on the web also. Looks like a sweet app. Any users?
I love evernote. I too fell victim to a palm rep telling me that all of my memos would be ok when they reset my phone, even after I told her that I had heard they could be lost. She guaranteed they would be fine, and of course - all gone. But luckily, they were my quick notes and not my important stuff. I put all of that onto Evernote, and really love it. They were all safe after the reset, and the ability to add data directly from my computer is a real plus. I never put anything important in the memo section- ever. Palm profile backup is a big FAIL in my book.
I love Evernote, it's my "killer app" - The only problem is the lack of an "offline" mode - I've found I have to open my shopping list before going into some stores that have poor data reception...
We HAVE to be able to sync our Pre's to a PC for data, (contacts, events, tasks, memos, pics, etc.), back-up!
...or the next PRe/Pixi should have a microSD card w/ a back-up to card solution.
No, we don't HAVE to have a "sync to PC". Sync implies two-way synchronization.... that already exists- it is the Synergy stuff.
As for the backup to microSD card, we don't need that either... since we could backup to a single file on the USB partition of the phone, itself, and easily copy that file off to any machine you like with usbstorage. The key is- this "option" needs to be a standard part of WebOS.
I lost most of my contacts, memos,tasks, and calendar items. Since I still have those info in my Palm desktop, I used the Palm "Data transfer assistant" to transfer to my Pre. After transferring the data to Pre, it will ask whether you want to sync it with your Palm Backup or Google. Make sure you choose Google this time. Your calendars and contacts will be much safer, however memos and tasks will still sync with Palm Backup.
I got back most of my stuffs, but not for those memos, tasks created in the last 3 months since I started using Pre.
I webOS Doctored my Pre and didn't really care if the Palm Backups where working or not. I have all my contacts in either Google or Exchange. When re-connecting those accounts to the phone the contacts synced back in. However... the Palm backup did load in copies of my Google contacts that I had before webOS Doctoring the Pre. Those contacts only have the names of the individuals and holds no other data behind them. When I go into them they just close right away, not giving me any time to delete them. When I try to link the synced Google contact with the backed up contact it doesn't see them as an option to link with... So I am stuck with these contacts now that do nothing.
In the contacts app, check to see if you have more than one Google account, perhaps you have a phantom one that is creating these corrupt contacts. I didn't notice any corrupt contacts like you but I did see 2 Google accounts in my list and removed 1 of them after doctoring mine.
This is the reason I went with Pocket Mirror. I have everything on my laptop and phone. They first time you sync is very painful (took me about 36 hrs to get everything from the laptop to the phone). But now is quick and works great for me.
Two nights ago I discovered my phone is not doing the auto back up each day. When I clicked on back up it said the last back up was 9/29. So I went ahead and did a back up but my phone still is not running the auto back up each day.
I was one of the unfortunate ones that lost all of my contacts. I decided to go ahead and put them all in gmail and then make my gmail contacts my default account. This way, regardless of what backs up with palm, I can always sync from google and never lose them. What a headache.
So - If I imported all of my contacts from my old phone to my Pre...into the Palm Profile, is there a simple way to now move them up to Google? Somebody above mentioned making Google the default account...will that copy the current contacts up or just new ones that I create on my phone?
There is no easy way. The article mentioned that you would have to do this manually.
I saw that in the article. I was hoping that somebody here had developed a simple solution. There are quite a few brilliant people here and this sounds like an opportunity for a little app action(hint, hint)! Maybe somehting that reads the contacts, creates a csv and emails it to a specified address...at least then I could import it somewhere.
my email app just shows a blank screen but everything else on my phone is fine...I'm a afraid to reset my phone just for the email app as I have just finished updating Splash ID for the second time and dont want to lose all that info again as well as other information stored on my phone. Is there a way just to reset the email app??
This happened to me. The weird thing is my google, AIM, and facebook accounts showed up after the backup, however, none of them pulled data down from the cloud. I could not manually log into them either. I just had to delete the accounts and start over. Its not that big of a deal though. The only data lost was SMS chat history. Backups dont save tasks, memos, or linked contact info anyways. All my contact and calendar info that I enter from my phone gets stored on google through the phone anyway as its the default account. in 30 minutes I was back up and running with all my preware patches.
When I doctored I had the same issue. I had to delete my accounts and re add them to the phone. It appeared they saved the account but not the password. Well they also didn't save the server settings, that is why I had to remove and re add them to the phone.
I believe this was one of the changes in 1.3.1 -- that you have to re-enter your passwords for linked accounts after restoring from Palm Profile:
"Backup no longer saves online account passwords. If you perform a partial or full erase or buy a replacement phone, after signing in to your Palm profile, you are prompted to enter the password for each of your online accounts. If you choose to skip this step, to continuing synchronizing this account, you must open an app that syncs with the account (Calendar, Contacts, Email) > application menu > Preferences & Accounts > tap the account name > enter your username and password."
This was part of the corruption that I had, 1.3.1 is suppose to ask for the password but the server settings are supposed to be there, mine weren't there; only the accounts names/email address existed. And besides that I lost all my memos and tasks. Contacts and calendar were synced to Google so no problem there.
This happened to me the other night. I had about 200 contacts, most of which I have manually gotten back and re-entered (with google as my profile now, not palm), but I lost some very important contacts that I have really no other way of getting back. Waiting on Palm to get back to me, was on the wire with a tech yesterday for almost an hour. Nice guy, really did try to help, but wasn't able to do anything, so he had to refer me up the food chain.
This is utterly ridiculous. Yet one more reason to drop the pre and go to some software company that has their shit together. It is absolutely foolish not to have self controlled back up like hot-sync.
Palm-Pre: "Please buy our phone cause we do things half ass"
I haven't had any issues, knock on wood, but to be safe, I changed my primary contacts from Palm profile to Google.
I got hit with this bug this morning, ironically. Very ticked off right now ... Lost everything all but 2 Contacts, 1 Memo and Apps. Grrr ...
I hate to tell all you folks who thing using Google guarantees you have good backups, but Google can fail, too. Remember the Microsoft / Danger fiasco of a month or so ago? Even big companies with enterprise class backup capability can screw up. Without the ability to have multiple backups stored in multiple locations, and multiple version (histories) of those backups, your data is at risk.
Any of them can fail...that is why it is important to keep multiple backups on multiple systems. If I can have all of the same contacts in my Palm Profile, on gmail and/or Yahoo!, and sync them locally to my PC, that would be best of all worlds.
I think the bigger thing is that Google Contacts allows us to export the contacts and import them back.
The Palm Profile does not give us an option to grab them.
You have a point, but Google don't f up much, and ain't no body, certainly not Microsoft, got more redundant systems and more servers, than Google. If I have to trust someone--I trust Google.
Posting on my Pre.
Fools, who kept all your data on a single, third-party server.
Palm is not at fault if you permanently lose your data, IMO. It's easy to sync with Google also.
I feel da pain, still sit at home wishing I kept all my Treo profile stuff. I've had sprint/treo's dating back to when i can barely crawl, I had so many contatcs at one point on my Treo I had to start deleting to make space. So many memo's personal and work, I had to alphabetize them to be able to find things. Tasks and Calendar appts' out da wazoo' as people would say.
I am suffering!!!!
On level 3 rep support now, still waiting for that 24 hour call back, it's been 72 hours, I'll call them tonight from home phone, when I have 2-3 hours to kill....
If they start offering you cheap stuff as compensation, demand to talk to corporate and demand yourself the Touchstone complete kit. It's the most expensive thing they got. Better than silly earphones and cases.
At least now I know that I am not the only one suffering through this issue. I had this happen to me a week ago when I had my phone replaced due to the headphone always on hardware malfunction. I still do not have all of my contacts back and most likely never will. I should have known better and definitely will not be swapping my phone out until I know my data can be replaced. So, I guess I'm waiting for those third party apps that let me back up everything onto my own PC.
I think the only way to go right now to make sure your calendar and contact info is saved is to make Gmail your default client. I have used it since I have had my Pre, and I have yet to have lost any data. Gmail sync's everything correctly and also has some nice functions you can add. You can have your weather, birthdays, football, and other interests added and synced to your calendar. If my Pre crash's or breaks..I can get the new phone log back in and import all the data. Palm profile with all the updates that are going on does not seem like a valid option at this point if you do not want to risk loosing data.
Having the pre is like being in a bad relationship (with Palm).
There are continuous, yet un met promises (any day now
Same thing happend to me. I lost hundreds of contacts, and all but 1 memo, and 1 task. Thankfully, I keep my calendar synced through work, so that was saved. After looking everywhere for a solution, I gave up. I just finished moving my contacts into google from an old Treo 755 Palm Desktop backup from a few years ago. Better than starting from scratch, I figure.
I'm really looking forward to DrewPre's utility backup. Until then, I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed that my memos and tasks stay safe in the Palm "cloud". Here's what I imagine the Palm "cloud" looks like right about now. If you look closely, you can see my contacts vaporizing into nothing-ness...
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/Images/WE12.jpg
:)
Doug
it happened to me this week. Had I known about this issue sooner I would have switched to google a long time ago. Losing my memos was even more hurtful. I had hundreds of lyrics that I trusted to the cloud that are gone now. :(
So this reminded me to go into Backup and take a look. Of course it was set to back up automatically "every day" but the last backup was on October 17. Not good that it wasn't backing up and even less good that it wasn't telling that it wasn't backing up.
This needs a fix.
Has anyone tried a product from Chapura called ECHO?
http://www.chapura.com/echo.php
I use their Pocket Mirror product: http://www.chapura.com/pm_standard_pre.php Works like a charm for my needs. The very first sync was painful since it took 36 hours to get everything between my laptop and Pre. Now it is just a breeze.
for anyone who needs to get their contacts into a spreadsheet and then import into Google, check out http://m.forums.precentral.net/palm-pre-tips-information-resources/21427... ...
Yeah... add my name to the list of people that got burnt. Even worse, when I was on the phone with Palm tech support, the agent tried to suggest that it was actually my facebook contacts that weren't syncing, because "according to our server logs all of your contacts have been uploaded" (or something like that)... I had to explain... "No, my mother has never had a Facebook account (and probably never will), and all of her contact phone numbers are gone... plus many of my friends that I had phone numbers for would never post their contact phone numbers publically on their Facebook account, but now all I have is their Facebook information and not their phone numbers." The brilliant response of my Palm tech support agent? "Oh"
This happened to me this week as well. I manually backed up before doctoring, assuming everything would be fine since I did this a month ago and everything WAS fine then.
When I went back into my phone, all my memos were gone. Most of my tasks were gone (2 of them came back..???). One the plus side, all my browser bookmarks came back.
Luckily I use Google for my contacts and calendar and so I did not lose any of that information. This is what I recommend that everyone do.
As far as memos and tasks, I'm in the process of trying to find a solution where EYE have control over the backup. Evernote seems to be a good option. However the webOS Evernote app doesn't allow you to add "todo" lists with checkmarks (although the Evernote Windows application does).
We need a way to back up our OWN tasks and memos in case you screw things up, Palm!
I'm thinking of getting a Droid over this.
Checksums?
Sad story that started so promising at the beginning of the year with Palm announcing the Pre...I sincerly hope they are addressing this soon and set things straight, otherwise they'll be just another sucker in the game that will be eaten alive by some bigger sucker and the looser is the customer who was loyal and trusting.
What is their PR department doing these days, sitting around and enjoy mojtos...or what?
I learned my lesson the hard way just like everyone else....I had hardware issues got a new phone and it only had 3 contacts out of 100 plus since then Ive used gmail and saved my contacts there by default. Screw the magical cloud that saves data I dont trust it one bit anymore.
Cloud computing is the next generation of IMS, get or it guys and embrace it. The Palm backup is NOT cloud computing. Not ONCE have I lost google data.
Palm does not need a desktop client in today's world.
All they need is a web portal where you can download your profile data in some standard data format. I'd be fine with pipe (|) delimited files since that's a symbol almost no one uses, but I'm sure there's a widely readable binary format, like DBF, they could use, that their pre-migration tool can read.
That's why Google is a decent cloud option; you can extract your contacts, calendar, docs, etc for local backups.
Then you could open your backups and confirm that they are correct, refreshing as needed, and have a local copy in case of a server failure.
That would certainly be a nice option, although it won't help for applications, bookmarks, pictures, music, settings, etc, etc.
What is needed is an included backup program on the phone that will backup to the USB partition so you can just copy that sucker off and keep it safe somewhere (plus a way to "restore" it safely if needed). Needs to be a standard part of WebOS.
So what if Palm does not need a desktop client, I do and I'm the customer.
I lost data from the cloud months ago and started using the google backup instead...but google isn't isn't EVERYthing to my Pre. I tested this by creating a contact on google and using the sych now on the Pre-- still no contact. Palm needs to create a desktop workstation.
Geez.... I sure hope Palm is reading this one...
This kind of service is absolutely *critical*... My prediction is that WebOS will totally FAIL if Palm does not nail this kind of thing. One word: Sidekick.
Palm has SUCH a GREAT *opportunity* to jump on this and be hero - add to that all the app *data* backup, make it reliable and deterministic and Palm will send the ball out of the park...
This would be a nice basis for another article: a comparison of all the stock backup solutions of current smartphones OS's with one foot (or both) in the cloud.
Perhaps a recap or table comparison of exactly what PIM or app data is saved in the cloud, what locally, and maybe some sort of reliability rating based on empirical data...
Extra credit for a rundown of third-party solutions as well.
http://www.precentral.net/comments/recent?page=3
just happened to me last night. I had to reset my phone with WebOS Doctor and when I logged into my phone for the first time afterwards, all that was saved was my apps, and 3 (THREE) phone numbers!?!?!?
people are idiots for relying on one place they have no control over for a backup. can't stop stupidity.
I partially suffered from this. When my first pre's power button failed to work, I received a refurb. I logged into my profile after activating and walked out the store, only to find one contact and 2 sprint numbers on my phone. I walk back in, and told the rep what happened. He took it and said he'd fix it. I think he just resynched it, but here is the kicker. I got about 80% of my contacts back. I received text messages from random numbers, who WERE saved on my old Pre's contacts. It seems numbers that I saved in the past 2 or 3 months weren't backed up.
Well that phone died, and I feared this would happen again, but when I got my 2nd refurbished Pre, I simply logged in and my contacts were there from the get go. I think it is Google from now on.
I would never ever trust ONE source as the sole backup. My precious PIM data is in Google, Outlook, Palm Desktop, Palm Pre, Treo Pro and Centro, plus exported Outlook datafiles.
the "cloud" at palm managed to lose 85% of my contacts.... how the frrruuuuccckkk did it keep about 15% or so of my address book?
wow...
I did manage to work the sprint reps over a bit to get a $505.00 dollar credit spaced equally over 12 months. I would not accept $500 just on point that my contact data is worth over $500 bucks......
I was then smart enough to take lots of backups on my previous phone, the palm centro, and then attach and email those backups to several email addys. I downloaded the last backup and went to a sprint store... borrowed their palm centro.... load the PRC file for nvbackup and then restored that centro to my last backup state and got all my contacts back.
wow.
sorry for misspelled words or whatever...drinking and blank
I love the reporting around this place. Keep up the great job, Derek! Ya!
:hivefive:
here's the important question - who has lost contacts who did NOT in any way hack their phone? (dev mode, preware, whatever else, etc.)
that happened to me on tuesday I had 200 + contacts my backup saved 21 is it worth contacting palm/sprint over? Or should I try finding my old phone to get majority of my contacts off there?
palm is lying this is a huge problem. Im mad that palm would lie . I spent 3 hours of the phone transferring my old contacts for my broken palm pre to a new one. I didnt get any contact back. I got transferred 5 times and palm customer service or sprint could not help me at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Palm you have to get your act together
MEMO APP HAS TO GO.
there is no cloud option for it, and it sucks anyway.
this is a basic pim function so work with either google or yahoo to allow us to sync noted to their servers and our accounts.
I lost my palm profile too, contacts were/are backed up in quadruplicate on premise and servers. Noted are not...so bye bye memos.
and don't tell me to buy an app for memos...BASIC PIM FUNCTION!
Thank you!!
Backup and memo... two best fixes in terms of what users would get in happiness vs. the time it takes Palm to find remedy.
That's bizarre I must have fallen into the "small number of customers" who had their contacts wiped after I fell into the other small number of customers who got their Pre replaced after the touchscreen failed after I fell into the other small number of customers who got their Pre replaced because the touch on their new refurb didn't work after I fell into the small number of customers who got their Pre replaced because the phone was stuck in headphone mode after I fell into the small number of customers who bought a Pre...
I was hit with this and didn't notice it until I got my third pre this week. I lost a handful of apps and contacts. Some apps I can't even find in the App catalog now.
Before I doctored my Pre. I manually backedup to Profile. Then I USBed the pre to laptop and unhid the files on the Pre storage and copied it all to my laptop.
After I doctored the Pre and logged in, I lost all my contacts and memos.
Question? If I copy the storage files from my laptop back to my Pre will it restore my contacts and memos? Or will it corrupt the pre more?
Well the good thing about losing everything is ya get to start over. As soon as I realized I had lost all my contacts, events and such; I defaulted to Google everything.
One thing about Blackberry backup, it was there every time!
I've been dealing with this since 1.2.1 upgrade crashed my phone in late September. I FINALLY got someone from Palm to tell me (TODAY!), yes they lost it and they are never getting it back. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 contacts and who-knows-how-many calendar events including birthdays. Thankfully, I haven't sold my Treo yet, so I might get most of it back. At least what I haven't corrected or changed. I was pushed to Corporate relations, who politely gave me a free accessory for the store. Now to argue with Sprint...
I ALSO LOST EVERY CONTACT, EVEN THOUGH I MANUALLY BACKUP EVERY TIME I ADD A NUMBER. SPRINT HAS TOLD ME ITS NOT THEIR FAULT, AND PALM JUST SAYS THEY've ESCALATED IT TO THEIR ENGINEERS AND THEY'll GET BACK TO ME. ITS BEEN A FRIGGIN WEEK NOW AND NO WORD FROM EITHER. I'm FED UP WITH THEM BOTH!
ok. I've had problems. Automatic back up wasn't working. Had to do it manually. Finially is working--I think.
Have switched back up to google.
However, no way to deal w/first 400 contacts off of my old phone. Do not want to type in by hand. Takes too long.
I have the old phone & sim card that I used w/sprint before this.
Is there a way for sprint to give me this info in computer form that I can upload to google so if I update info on my palm I don't lose it.
Terrified re loosing my info as automatic back up they promise does not always work.
Local sprint store is rude, so trying to understand things first as they are lazy and will always say it is not possible.
No cloud can replace manually backing up a zip file of all your info to your pc. I totally got screwed the other day with this too. I lost 1,000 numbers and a ton of important notes =0(. Luckily I had google setup as my primary since I got the phone and I had my samsung instinct in the closet. I grabbed that thing ran to the store and got all my contacts back. I was so upset at palm when I was on hold for so long to hear SORRY your stuff is .... GONE. How do you not have a backup of a back up. Isnt it common knowledge in the online world to have back up servers of everything. Correct me if I am wrong.... I hope palm gets this together because I would hate to see these silly issues (others I will not note we all know here) Kill palms chance at regaining market value and customers.
Without wishing to sound unsympathetic it is mad to entrust your important information to just one place. Even if you use a desktop sync solution - and they do exist even if they are not from Palm - you should still back that data up.
I use exchange server because that is what my business runs. But we backup the exchange server every day too and keep an off site backup as well.
Does anyone know how to contact Palm if you've experienced this issue? I never actually registered a complaint when I lost all my memos and tasks earlier this week...if they're actually working to try to restore this data, I'd like them to try.
Palm is full of bullcrap. As much as I love my Pre, customer service at Palm Sucks!!.
I lost my contacts twice!! once in july and now on Nov 16.
Same crap, apologies and they are waiting on their "Engineers" like if it is a third party company.
"we will get back to you within 24 to 48 hours" ... they got back to me 3 weeks later!!! to tell me they could not.
Same crap now. It has been 5 days. Nothing.
prime reason why palm should have native support for syncing to your mac/pc. i think palms cloud is nice to have as a back up, but i would much rather have a copy of my data on my mac as well. rather have 2 back ups just to be safe.
i know this has been a huge issue for myself because i havent even been able to get my contacts synced through google correctly. i first synced my address book and ical when i got the phone, but after that everything has been added to my phone and havent found a way to get a 2 way sync working correctly with google and my mac. ive been wanting to take my phone in lately too because ive been having some issues with 4 HOUR LATE TEXTS AND MISSED CALLS!!!! but im afraid i will lose a lot of data if i rely on just the "cloud" to back up.
@ PALM
LOST ALL CONTACTS FROM MY PHONE ON THE LAUNCH OF WEBOS 1.3.1. 3 days of talking to sprint and palm and still waiting for a call back from palm I realised my wifes pre just lost all of her contacts to. (just out of the blue). So called palm about hers to and after telling the rep how my wifes blaming me for it he laughed and said there's nothing they can do about it and someone would be calling me back about her phone to! Well 3 days later an still no call back. Still no contacts on boths pres. And still can't login to yahoo I'm either! PALM you suck!
I really wish people would quit being condescending if you have your data only on on palm--we do it because we are not computer geniuses and don't know other options!!!!
The second I heard I could back up to google I did.
But there are still the 500 contacts I transfered from my original phone. I have the phone (motorola 1c902) & the sim card, but do not know how to get this info into a database!
And the only option you are giving me here is to hand type all this info into a database--which is extremely time consuming.
THERE MUST BE A WAY to get this data moved either from my palm or from my old phone so when I make changes to the original data which is now in my palm, it is backed up.
Could someone please tell me how?
It would be a better option that telling me I am stupid bedause I don't which I'm seeing too much in this forum and is really pissing me off.
I envy you techies for your knowledge, but not everyone is a techie & us normal folks would appreciate help instead of reading how stupit we are for following the process given!
this happened to me yesterday, exchanged my (i lost count) palm pre for a new one because the screen lost the ability to touch it and when i got the new PRE, it didnt remember anything but my memos, thank good i use google for calender and contacts, it would have sucked if palm would have lost my information, that would have been the straw that broke the cammels back.
palm is so full of it im on my sixth pre my wifes on her third and my sister is on her fourth my brother is the only one still with his first three days ago i lost all 220+ contacts in my phone after upgrading to 1.3.1 and have made many calls to sprint and palm with nothing being resolved all im getting is a run around from both.
I NEED THE NUMBER FOR PALM SERVICE...I haven't gotten a call back in over 3 days, I can't seem to find my sticky at home!!! Anyone have the number for this so called "level 3" tech support?
Sat in chat with support for close to 30min, was put on hold for 10min and when they got back to me the agents ended the session.
They say that my contacts have been backed up, but I cant get them back when syncing so I dont have a clue what to do now.
Palm could have kept the rock solid feature set of classic Palm OS when migrating to Web OS. Instead this predictable nonsense goes on. Alas.
very disappointed ...
I also hitted here in Germany by failing recovery of my backup/profile after reseting my device. I chatted with palm support and they said this thing happens often and ask whether they could ask me some questions to find a way why this happens.
But at end of chat, there wasn't a chance to recovery my data. They haven't a backup of their backup :-(((
All my 500 contacts, 600 Memos, 2000 Calendar events, Account data, everthing is lost in their clouds. Only some of installed Apps are back - not all!
I'm so disappointed with palm. I wish I would have my old Palm Desktop back....
Never had such problems in the past 10 years with mit reliable PalmOS !!!
Palm's message says a "few" have lost data. I don't believe it. It is generally assumed, statistically, that the actual number of people with the same problem is much, much greater than those that would complain about said problem. (Or in reverse the number that do in fact complain about a problem are a small representation of the whole.) As a lot of you know it is statistics and we are a sampling, maybe a little skewed, of a much larger community with the same problem. Looking at the many different responders here, I got to believe that this problem is HUGE. People have probably gotten to a point that they are so discouraged that they are looking for alternative Smart Phone solutions, discouraging their friends from buying the Pre, etc. (Maybe one would encourage their enemy, but I wouldn
Backup failure is very common case now a days, so to avoid it better and more efficient backup software's are needed. One of such backup software is Backup iPhone which never fails in backing up the iPhone.
So, in my opinion choose any such kind of software for your Palm and resolve the problem.
I never ran into this issue before. I am glad of this but i am glad for the fix.
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This is still the case. Got my phone replaced under the warranty and now unable to sign into my palm profile on the new device. It is saying, "Data Not Restored: We were unable to restore your data. Please wait a few minutes and try again."
Its been 40 minutes
NOOOO!!!!! I have had a "static" issue with my palm for the 1st time an issue in 5 months so i go to sprint they order a replacement they called to let me know it was in so i made sure i backed up EVERYTHING! well i just got my phone back & home to see only 2 contacts & only about 1/3 of my downloaded & purchased apps back! It has my google accts & my aim acct so it is the correct palm acct but i am missing my contacts! thats my biggest fuss! this sux! the only good thing to come out of this is NO absolutely NO NO NO OREO! so at least thats good! i hope the oreo or lack of stays, & yes i believe this is a referb.
Had the "try in a few minutes" problem. Called sprint, after talking to three different techs. over a two day period. A sprint tech told me the serial number was not updated for the replacement pre. on palms end. Then they finally got me over to palm, after i created a new generic profile so I could use the phone They had me update the new phone to 1.4. Then I had to partial erase and was able to log in with the original palm profile. Everything restored to norm. except pics which the local sprint repair place kindly put on sd card for me.
hope this helps
these phones always have problems. I dont think they will ever make a perfect one EVER
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