Making the best out of a bad situation....

[ThatBlokeDave]

So it appears that my Pleco flash backup is corrupted and I stand to lose months of flash carding and thousands of entries. To cut a long story short, I got a new phone, made a backup, transferred the backup to my PC and wiped the memory card in my old phone so it can be used in the new one.... The problem was when I tried to restore my DB I got an error

Anyway, since the picture looks bleak at the moment, I would like to hear any ideas about how to make the best of it.... has this happened to you? Did you find a restart helped you move into a newer, better routine?? How much should one rely on flash carding anyway? Should I trust Pleco for flashcarding again?? I came from Anki and am tempted to go straight back for the could syncing alone.

Also any general motivational stories would be lovely....

Merry Christmas everyone.

[character]

Did you contact Pleco for support? Pleco Forums That would be my first step.

[ThatBlokeDave]

I did contact support and Mike was quick to reply which is impressive over the Christmas period.

This post was made in a panic while my wings were still flapping and the end of the world seemed close I have not resolved the issue yet but I am hoping something can be salvaged from my backup file...

However, if the worst happens and I lose it all, It would still be interesting to hear from other people who have had a setback and come through it.... I am trying to plan for the worst and think it would be a good time to take a long look at my study habits to see where I can improve before starting again.

[peterlkj]

I've been using Pleco flashcards to study since 2007 as one of my main methods to build vocab. Currently I have ~14,000 "learnt" and another 11,000 odd to add. I've deliberately reset all the flashcard scores to zero at least 3 or 4 times over the years as sometimes I think it's good to be forced to go over the "basics" again. I'm not suggesting others should do this, but to give you some small encouragement that it may not be altogether a bad thing!

[kdavid]

I use a Pleco/Anki combo for flashcards and other facts.

I use Pleco to drill vocabulary into my short-term memory. I then transfer to Anki for long-term.

Anki is great because it backs everything up on its cloud.

[ThatBlokeDave]

Thanks for the replies...... Peterljk, when you reset your scores to zero, how did you manage them coming back in? Did you allow 10, 20 or whatever amount of cards to be added to the repetition routine a day or did you add them all at once and just work through grinding them all?

One thing I am worried about is having a lopsided schedule where cards pile up on one days leaving other days with relatively little to do. I know over time with failures the load will even out but that seems to take some time in my experience.

kdavid, I like the sound of your approach. Pleco is much more flexible when it comes to flash card settings and preferences but there is something about Anki's algorithm that seems nicer... that is a very subjective opinion as for all I know, they could use the same algorithms but It just seems that intervals don't grow as quickly for just failed cards.

On another note, I was thinking about doing more sentence mining this time around if all goes pear shaped. I noticed that even though I "Knew" a lot of words, using them in daily speech and even picking them out of a paragraph of text was sometimes tricky.

[peterlkj]

"Grinding" is about right - I always aim to do 200-400 cards a day, reviewing repeatedly until I've got them all right at least once. If they're cards you know, you can obviously do quite a few more in the same time since you don't have to repeat so many again and again. That way workload is fairly constant (~1 hour). Boring? Yes. Addictive? A little. Useful? Very.