Thread by @roamhacker

1/ Roam backup terminologies & strategies. Recently in the Slack channels a discussion was started about backup. When you do an Export you have 3 options. Markdown, JSON and EDN. These terms can be confusing.

I want to provide an opinionated view & some basic guidance. #roamcult

2/ my basic strategy is to export in EDN & Markdown. These two formats give me (1) ability to fully restore my graph & (2) to restore the text of individual pages.

JSON is JavaScript Object Notation and mostly is intended for programmers & isn't as useful for a backup strategy.

3/ EDN (from the developer documentation) is Extensible Data Notation. A superset of edn is used by Clojure to represent programs, and it is used by Datomic and other applications as a data transfer format.

Nerdy! Yawn!

4/ For none nerds: the EDN format most accurately reflects the way the internal database of Roam stores data. So when exporting EDN, it is a full fidelity backup, as a format it is expressive enough to really capture all the attributes that make up a graph. JSON doesnt do this.

5/ There is one essential thing to know about using EDN: In Roam when you use a EDN backup to do a restore, it restores (replaces) the entire database currently stored in Roam. It restores everything. It overwrites the graph.

This means its not good for restoring just a page.

6/ A markdown backup exports each page as an individual file using the Markdown format. So Markdown is very useful for restoring the content of a single page. Markdown does not retrain all aspects of a page, but maintains important elements that covers the 80/20 of recovery needs

7/ Markdown exports the text, the outline structure and some basic formatting elements (bold, italics and highlight). Again, this is very useful for retrieving the text of a page or text of blocks. One minus of Markdown is that it exports block refs as refs ((AwxsIaD21)).

8/ If you want full fidelity Markdown export (including block refs), #roam42 converter tool does this for you. It is not a backup tool, but allows you to extract full text for export into other programs.

9/ So Roam allows you to export your data, but it doesn't include any tools for an automated backup strategy. This is a complaint point for many many users. We should discuss what would be a good automated solution??????

10/ In the meantime, we can and SHOULD set up a good backup strategy. And frankly speaking, if Roam eventually automates the backup, it is still a best practice to have your own manual backup strategy in the unlikely event Roams backup fails -- this is life it happens.

11/ BACKUP Strategy includes answering a few questions:
(1) What do we need to backup?
(2) When do we need to backup?
(3) How do we remember to do our backup?
(4) How long should you keep your backups?

12/ (1) What do we need to backup:
+ Do a EDN backup to get a full fidelity backup of your graph. In worse case scenario, we use this to replace and restore a graph to the date of the backup.This is for disaster recovery!
+ Do a Markdown backup so you can restore individual pages

13/ (2) When do we need to backup?
You need to establish how frequently you think your database needs to be backed up. Once a month is probably not wise, Once a week is very reasonable.
I do it every 3 to 4 days, and then sometimes when I did a lot of important work in a day.

14/ How do we remember to do our backup?
Set up a recurring reminder in a TODO program, or better yet, use DELTA feature of Roam to create a repeating reminder. Here is what mine looks like:

+ Backup: EDN & Markdown {{[[∆]]:4+0}}

Every 4 days on my DNP I get a backup reminder

15/ How long should you keep your backups?
This depends on your needs, but I do my backup every 4 days and put it into a Google Drive folder. I keep the EDN backups for about 2 months, since I won't every fully restore a backup older than that. continued...

16/ But I never delete the Markdown backups. I like to be able to go back in history to any date and get the contents of a page. I am surprised at how often I do go back in time a few months to see what the contents of a page where in the past.

17/ In summary, my backup strategy:
+ Export to EDN & Markdown
+ Backup every 4 days, or on days when have done extensive work
+ Store backups in a cloud storage for easy retrieval
+ Use Delta to get a reminder
+ Keep EDN backups for 2 months, Markdowns I dont delete

18/ Finally have some expressed concern that a $15 month program with no automated or time based backup is disappointing. We can't fault a person if they think that. In comparison, Dynalist is $3 a month & includes automated daily backups to cloud services. So it can be done.

19/ Wow.. a Saturday morning tweeting about Backup strategies. Man, I need to get a life away from Roam at some point :-)

What is your backup strategy? Would love to learn from your best practices. Please tweet back.