[sequethin]

But everything prior to Monday the 17th is GONE. It's just not there. It's gone. I really can't have that happening it could mean my job. What's going on here? I haven't synced in at least 25 days because sometimes syncing ruins my appointments and I've been working on a project that required very specific time keeping. I didn't sync because I wanted to avoid wacky calendar problems and now all of my stuff is gone. This is so incredibly bad :( I realize I may not be able to get the dates back but how can I stop this from happening again?

[DacyJ]

Wirelessly posted (by Milton and his stapler.)

Check on your desktop manager to see if it is set for your device to win or outlook, I have mine set to two way that wAy it syncs both.

[sequethin]

well i use my blackberry with a mac, and I normally use missing sync. but...sometimes that causes weird problems that's why I haven't synced in 25 days. But now all the old calendar items are gone. Why did it delete old events if i told it to keep them forever? that's my main concern. I can't have the calendar being cleared without my explicit permission... it's my phone it should do what I say, not what it thinks is best. Especially since I explicitly told it to keep appointments forever.

[DacyJ]

Wirelessly posted (by Milton and his stapler.)

But if your syncing application doesn't have it set to keep them it will delete the older ones. Check that settings to see if it is set.

[sequethin]

I understand that a syncing app could remove old entries depending on how it's configured, but you see - I haven't synced in at least 3 weeks... so where did the blackberry get the crazy idea of deleting anything? Is there some magic "kill all appointments without confirmation" keystroke that i might have performed by accident?

[DacyJ]

Wirelessly posted (by Milton and his stapler.)

How is your memory? I believe that it will delete emails and call logs first?

[sequethin]

I've never checked my memory ;) but there is something called "File Free" in my status that says 1611565 Bytes. Is that my memory? I wouldn't care if it deleted emails and call logs, the emails are on a server (IMAP) and the call logs aren't that important to me really. I'm scared that I can't rely on my device anymore, and that's not good feeling.

Edit:
By the way, I do appreciate that you are trying to help me. Thanks.

[mrtune]

Your file free is extremely low. That's most likely the cause of stuff getting deleted off your phone without you knowing about it.

[ndub33]

Here is a link with some excellent suggestions for freeing up some memory:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/gene...ee-memory.html

[daphne]

1611565 bytes is very low.

[sequethin]

Ok well as for the free space, I had way too much email saved on my device! I deleted 99% of it but the calendar still wipes out my appointments. I just looked and now everything from november (and of course everything prior to november as well) is all gone, including things I added around the time of my first post here. I still don't understand why it is deleting my appointments without any warning. It should at least tell me something, especially since I told it to keep the appointments "forever". It's really a vital thing for me, the notes I keep in the appointments help me to write bills for work I've done with my clients. This is supposed to be a "business phone" right? It's killing me right now to think I'll have to go back to pen and paper.

[takeshi]

Deleting email isn't going to free up a significant amount of memory. You can confirm this by checking File Free again. It won't have changed much.

Make sure you don't have any media files (pictures, videos, ringtones, music, etc) stored in device memory. These should all be stored on a media card which you need to purchase separately. It's a pretty common mistake for those new to the BB.

If media files aren't consuming your device memory then try a battery pull and see if your File Free increases dramatically. If that's the case you might have a memory leak and addressing that is a bit trickier.

[rockinsage]

This just started happening to me in the past week (Pearl 8130, OS 4.5). I have my calendar items on BB set to be retained forever. I sync about once/twice per week. I'll sync with Desktop Manager (I use the option to sync to Yahoo Calendar) and DM will tell me that 266 calendar items have been deleted from the BB and will now be deleted from Yahoo. I never deleted them of course, so I do a re-sync and add everything back onto my BB from Yahoo. Same thing happens a week later.

I know about the whole memory situation and the OS deleting call logs, etc., when memory is low, but I didn't know it would delete Calendar events as well. To me this is a major shortcoming of the BB OS -- if the OS is going to delete logs, events, emails, etc. when your memory gets low, without your consent, it NEEDS TO LET YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO DO IT. Deleting unsaved emails and call logs is one thing, but deleting calendar events you have set to be retained forever is crazy.

[takeshi]

Email . It's going to take a change on their end of things. Personally, I've never had this issue with any of my 6 models over the years. Definitely backup often.

[raja_3012]

Originally Posted by rockinsage

I know about the whole memory situation and the OS deleting call logs, etc., when memory is low, but I didn't know it would delete Calendar events as well. To me this is a major shortcoming of the BB OS -- if the OS is going to delete logs, events, emails, etc. when your memory gets low, without your consent, it NEEDS TO LET YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO DO IT. Deleting unsaved emails and call logs is one thing, but deleting calendar events you have set to be retained forever is crazy.

I do NOT think that this is design flaw with BlackBerry. The whole concept of Low Memory Manager (LMM) is built around this. Its objective is to ensure there is enough free memory on the Blackberry for it to operate normally.. something similar to garbage collectors in middle-ware applications like WebSphere or WebLogic. Whenever the amount of free memory goes down below a certain level it begins to delete xxx8220;low and medium priorityxxx8221; information in order to retrieve space. Read email and past date appointments are considered low and medium priority by Blackberry in such situations. These priorities are decided by Blackberry, cannot be changed and overrides user settings.

I do not think it is a shortcoming but it is a good feature in BB's. At least better than Windows Mobile phones where it would freeze up on your face and refuse to do anything. This way it notifies the user to be more judicious in memory matters. So if you want your BB to do what you have set, you need to give what the BB wants.

[raja_3012]

i would second "takeshi" .. Backup as often as you can.

[rockinsage]

raja_3012

Just because I love RIM and their products doesn't mean I love all of RIM's design decisions. I am a blackberry fan and will probably only own blackberries as long as they continue to exist and as long as I continue to exist.

However, I won't go as far as saying that I believe the current design of the LMM is good -- in the way it decides what is low priority data and what it can delete without notifying the user. I'm only a little familiar with the LMM, but I have been a software developer (on the Java platform) for about 5 years and a developer on other platforms for about 10 years -- just so you know where I'm coming from. It sounds like you're coming from a similar background.

I guess it depends on your perspective, but to me, the email and calendar data on the blackberry is about as sacred as it gets. That's primarily what the blackberry is all about (from a data perspective). I'm not saying that the OS should not delete this data when it needs to, all I'm saying is that the user should at least be prompted that it's going to happen (to give them a chance to free up memory in some other way if they so desire), or at the minimum give them an alert that it's ALREADY happened so that they're not caught by surprise when their data is suddenly gone. I'm not aware of any other OS's that delete USER data without warning (at least on purpose) - most I'm familiar with alert you when disk space is low to allow YOU to decide what to get rid of. I'm not familiar with Windows Mobile, but obviously letting the memory situation get dire enough that a freeze occurs is not the answer either.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't WebSphere and WebLogic delete or garbage collect orphaned/unused objects and possibly log files, etc., when memory gets low? They don't delete stored user data do they? My understanding of Java garbage collection is that it gets rid of instantiated objects that are out of scope and no longer being used by an application. To me, deleting data from blackberry databases (emails, events, etc.) is a little different.

And I do backup often, otherwise I would not be able to recover my calendar when this happens. Ugh.

I respect your opinion and suggestions, thanks for posting them.

[raja_3012]

I see what you are saying.. I would agree that it would be a better approach if the berry alerts/warns the user of an approaching low file memory status. I did send an email to stating the updated design approach. As far as WebSphere is concerned it does delete orphaned objects.. I meant BB considers low or medium priority stuff as orphaned and then deletes it. Of course application servers are no comparison to a BB because a BB operates in very stringent operating conditions like less memory, relatively slow processor etc.

I too respect your opinion. Thanks a lot for posting them. It was a good discussion.. wasn't it?

[rockinsage]

raja_3012

Very good points on app servers vs BB, thanks!

[sequethin]

Originally Posted by raja_3012

At least better than Windows Mobile phones where it would freeze up on your face and refuse to do anything. This way it notifies the user to be more judicious in memory matters. So if you want your BB to do what you have set, you need to give what the BB wants.

My main gripe with this was that on my old Treo 700P (note the P, it's the palm version). I could have not only calendar items for years (literally, 2 years so far, I still have the phone). I have about...10 calendars? 10 different calendars, not all important, some just sports teams schedules, moon phases, what have you. Still - 10 calendars worth of items, with some dating back to 2006. And on my curve I can have 1 calendar (the 4.5 "separate calendar per email account" doesn't help me unfortunately) and only retain appointments for about a month.

I got over the lack of multiple calendars (I guess) but not being able to retain calendar items is insane. I have no sd card in my Treo but I have a 1GB card in the blackberry which is never more than 25% full. Why not let me store calendar items there? It's not like they can be that large of an item to store, can they? I mean it's text! haha. I'm trying to remain positive about this but it's very disheartening because I thought I was moving forward and it feels like I'm moving backward.

I'm glad that others have responded to this, so I don't feel alone in my plight

I will most definitely be emailing RIM. I'm glad I found blackberryforums because at least I feel like there is someone out there listening, even if it's not RIM. If anyone else is going to contact RIM about this issue I'd appreciate if you update the thread as well. Of course if there is a "silver bullet" that will fix this I'm all ears