Call me a pessimist but ANYTHING I care about is backed to a file on my hardrive. icloud; google cloud--only good for holding until I get it moved to a file that is MINE and all MINE.

Well, arcy, it is 'mine all mine' but when you have 2 files with the same name (one on phone and one on laptop) and they try to sync then it becomes an issue. And I specifically turned sync off, but the upgrade did it for me anyway.

I have all my ebooks and documents backed up on my flash drive

I haven't backed up in awhile, but last time I tried to restore notes off my back up drive, I couldn't seem to do it. Very frustrating.

Frustrating for sure. Wish I had the answer for you.

Have you double checked (Settings) to be sure your Notes are turned on?

Maybe something here will help. Good luck.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209254

I save my "notes" in email drafts. I never trusted computers and yet here I am.

So sorry you have to deal with that! Is there nothing that can be done?

I avoid the cloud. I've seen and heard too many similar gripes about losing data in similar circumstances.

Several years ago I gave up on backing up things on flash drives especially my spread sheets. Each "improved" update on my various computers only created a garbled mess. I also do not have my cellphone linked to my laptop for the same reason Annie has. If I want to save something I send myself an email and save it.

I agree with @palisades_. I've never had an issue with backups. I have my phone automatically set to back up when it's near my laptop to iTunes while on wifi. Which is pretty much daily.

My experience with Apple products is that for my taste, there are too many hard to find and sometimes unchangeable settings whose effects can be unwanted. In the intended simplicity and automatic actions is too much complication. Or maybe I'm still too unfamiliar with different functionalities.

While we still have (and I suspect will always have) WIndows PCs, we both recently got iPhones for cost reasons in place of what had been a consistent string of Androids. (Android and iPhones seem to have switched positions as to which line is more expensive and which less expensive).

My only Apple product is an iPhone and there's nothing for it to sync with other than my Google standard apps. Unbeknownst to me, the phone had been uploading files to iCloud, something I don't want or need, and when I got a message that my quota was about to be filled, I deleted everything there and found the setting to turn off this function I hadn't chosen to have happen.

My wife still struggles with inconsistent syncing between her phone and her iPad. I don't want to spend the time to get that sorted out and she doesn't either so the unexpected inconveniences will remain.

It won't help with this situation, but I use Carbonite to continuously back up my computer. There is an annual fee, but it's worth it to me not to lose anything. Just a thought.

Does anyone use a different program to keep notes? Workflowy? Obsidian?

I use Google Keep. It syncs across platforms and AFAIK, I've never lost a note to any glitches or updates.

The only notes I make to myself of more than short term use are a few reference text files for various things, like my passwords.

I have standard folder names (sub-directories) on each PC I use, and also keep a copy as a document on my phone. I periodically will attach the current versions to an email, which I can then use to update phone copies and PC copies on diffferent PC and different location. I've never had a problem of version control for these data bits that change. I know that when I make a change, I need to distribute it to myself. And, the files are always available by doing a search (on a PC, tablet, or phone) for the email.

It's a different flow but it makes what I want to refer to available everywhere pretty effortlessly.

@Elmer J Fudd, iCloud is perfect for me! All of my photos and contacts are synced. I can easily download my photos from my iCloud storage to my external hard drive. If my phone is ever lost or stolen, iCloud has Find My Device so I can disable the phone and hopefully find it.

My brother and I use Google Docs for notes, and we also share files on Google Drive, which is free.

Personally, I use Dropbox to save files, and I think I pay $100 a year for 2 TBs of storage, which is more than I need at the moment. I can view my files (a lot of which are photos) on my desktop in L.A., my tablet, phone, and laptop, which I use in Cathedral City.

I have zero Apple products - I do not like Apple because it seems to think that it knows more about what I want than I do.

In the early 1990s, I used to do dBase III programming for database files at work, and this made it easy for me to view, edit, and print information. However, this was DOS based, and when we upgraded to Windows 3.1, I was no longer able to do this.

witty, not only did iCloud suck up all the images I had on my old Android phone (5% of which I'd already moved off to a PC and the rest of which I didn't want), the setting I knew nothing about decided that all images sent to me from Day 1 via email, SMS messages, and WhatsApp (and I get a lot, some every day) should get pulled in too. So when I received the message that my free quota was about to be full and here were my options for $X per month (for something I didn't want), I looked into it and saw what was going on. Everything has been deleted and the setting turned off.

Everyone has different work flow preferences. I don't take many photos with my phone and the ones I want to keep, I move off myself. No data or image files of importance are stored on my phone, they're elsewhere and always redundantly backed up.Lars' insightful comment just above says it all for me:

" I do not like Apple because it seems to think that it knows more about what I want than I do "

As for iCloud and Find My Phone, I have that off too. I've had cell phones for a long time and have never lost one. I know how to brick it should that be necessary. Find My Phone provides a capability I'm pretty confident I will never need.