I don’t want to “leave it unattended”, that is hardly a good description. I’m sitting on the couch working, the dog wants to go out, so I CLOSE the laptop…which is the OPPOSITE of leaving it unattended. But the work from the previous hours is not saved if there is a system freeze.
As was said earlier, Scrivener auto-saves every two (or custom) seconds of inactivity.
But even that I don’t trust. – I don’t trust myself, I don’t trust my computer, I don’t trust Microsoft, and I don’t trust the ice cream guy.
I use snapshots and backup now, zipped and timestamped backups extensively.
I control all of it manually. (No auto-backup on project close or open, etc)
Then upload my most recent backup to Google Drive at the end of the day.
It just never failed me.
I have been using scrivener almost daily for more than 10 years. I’ve used it on 7 or 8 pc laptops and 2 desktops. I’ve had the problem only twice. The last time was about 7 years ago and it had a similar cause(perhaps the exact same). Perhaps you have not followed this whole thread, I certainly understand there are more interesting things, but it turns out all of my settings were as should be. The project was saving to hard drive, backing up to google drive, Automatic backups were turned on.
So there was literally nothing I could have done different or better.
People keep saying the problem is the computer. That’s a stupid reply. Of course the problem is the computer, that’s what autosave exists for! Every computer has the potential to overheat or glitch for some other reason. This is a brand new fairly powerful 16 g Ram 11th gen processor Sony Vaio. I did not expect it to freeze, but if it does, I should not lose work that has been supposedly auto-saving every 2 seconds! People here get defensive. I love Scrivener, have paid for it more than once and have recommended it to many colleagues. But there IS a flaw in the program here. You might go years without running into it. You have, Nice. It’s been 7 years since I last saw this. But it can happen. It shouldn’t. Period.
- Automatic backups of the saved version of your project ? (Google handled)
- Or a cloud duplicate of a Scrivener made zipped-timestamped backup ?
Case number one could very well have just overwritten the previous version with a f* up one.
I did follow the thread.
But perhaps it’d be best that you wait for your frustration to deflate a bit, and that you see a bit more clearly what we’re trying to tell you ? (Just sayin)
1 Like
If you have only had the problem twice in ten years, the issue is probably not Scrivener and probably not your work habits. The thing that has changed is the computer. Which, as you yourself concede, has known issues.
Autosave can’t autosave if the computer won’t let it. That is, if the freezing issue involves a problem with disk access, that problem would also impede Scrivener’s ability to save files.
If the laptop is closed, the computer is asleep: Scrivener can’t save, backups don’t run, etc. If you put the computer to sleep and it then has trouble waking up, then there is a high likelihood that any data that was in memory at the time will be lost. Again, Scrivener can’t save data if the computer won’t let it.
Also, a point of clarification. Scrivener does NOT “autosave every two seconds.” It saves after two seconds of idle time. So if, for example, you type for fifteen minutes without stopping, close the computer, and get up to let the dogs out, whatever you typed during those fifteen minutes will be present only in the computer’s memory.
What you need is a better backup setup.
Even if nothing had happened to your project (and it sucks, we all agree - only people trying to help you here), I’d be telling you this, knowing what I know now of the way you go about it.
Snapshots would have potentially spared you this.
Zipped-timestamped backup would 100% have spared you this.
Relying solely on the fact that the software auto-saves after a few seconds of inactivity (over and over, OVER THE SAME SINGLE FILE) is far from enough.
Worst case scenario, having better backup habits, you would have maybe lost one hour of work. (?) More or less.
Now, since that didn’t come to the subject, I am gonna ask:
did you by any chance navigate to your project’s Files>Data subfolder and try and see if by any luck your project’s files are still there and salvageable ?
Like, try to open one in LibreOffice or something. (Whatever you do, just don’t save over it.)
Screenshot
Would be quite a lot of messing around, but if you added documents to your project that are no longer in your project, who knows, you might just find them there.
1 Like
My backups are set to compress on google drive. Every box is checked except create back up on opening program.
I don’t know how frequently the autobackup is supposed to create a file. I worked a few hours yesterday and it did not create one.
Should we completely dismiss the idea that there is a flaw in scrivener? I know people get defensive about that. I love the program too. But there are flaws in even the best of programs.
One might not encounter this often. In my case, twice in more than 10 years.
I seem to remember last time someone, perhaps a program developer, explained that when there is some kind of power loss to the system, the program writes a blank page. That actually didn’t happen here, that’s what happened 7 years ago. I had about 40 files, some representing scenes in the screenplay, some representing notes. All became blank pages after the power crash(or something similar).
Yesterday that did not happen, but it’s unsettling. That’s why my backups are in Drive. So worst case scenario I only lose a couple of days work, unlike last time, when I lost a couple months worth.
In this case… I seriously doubt Scrivener actually froze your disk.
(Your disk froze, as you say it. Your computer crashed at the wrong moment. So yes, the issue is way more likely to be the computer than anything else. Hard not to agree.)
But even if there was a flaw in Scrivener (there is actually quite a couple, but I seriously doubt this to be one), wouldn’t you then want to take the proper steps to shield you from it?
The backup options pane will tell you.
You can also create one manually at any time.
Here is what I think.
I find it hard to believe that someone could spend a whole day writing without ever giving Scrivener the few seconds of inactivity it needs to trigger the auto-save function.
(I’ll base myself on the fact that you said that you lost ALL of yesterdays work. Not bits, all of it.)
I don’t know how exactly the auto-backup in google drive thing works, but if it is like most cloud systems, it is likely just it that, following the crash, overwrote your project on your computer with the previous version it had.
(Just a theory.)
(How or why being above my knowledge.)
→ If I am right, any new documents created during that missing period of work might still be there (in the project’s DATA sub-folder) along the other files.
From the thread, it’s not clear to me whether Google Drive contained the original project, Scrivener’s automatic backups, or both.
If it contained the original project, then we also have to consider that there are known data integrity issues with Google Drive’s handling of Scrivener projects.
If it only contained Scrivener’s automatic backups, then Google Drive is exonerated of any role in the damage to the original project.
Because it is zipped. Right ? (Beside the project itself not being stored on google drive, of course that is)
But, where is it then, now ?
I asked that specific question, had no answer, but given how it constantly comes back to auto-save, all points to think that there actually never was a zipped backup of any kind.
Or at least not a timestamped one. → (The issue, should there have been a zipped+timestamped backup, would be fixed already. Wouldn’t it?)
Another factor: the user only realized the work to be missing starting a fresh session (the day after, or right after the crash, don’t matter). Not while he/she was working on his/her project before the crash happened. So it is not like stuff just disappeared as he/she was working on it.
So something must have happened between the crash and the time of realization. Not before the crash, as he/she implies having witnessed it.
Anyways, that’s all above my competence, except for the fact that all indicates that there never was a real backup. More even so if the user never shuts down scrivener, while knowingly or not having Scrivener set to auto-backup on project close (on project open wouldn’t count here), and had the computer crash before ever then closing Scrivener.
@leitskev I apologize in advance if I repeat things others have said, as I’ve only skimmed this thread. 
You are not.
This is a scenario specific to Windows Scrivener–I’ve never read of it occurring on the Mac side. It used to occur more frequently with Windows Scrivener v1, until the developers introduced a tweak to auto-save in one of the last v1 updates. This tweak greatly reduced how often posters raised this scenario, so I don’t see it mentioned as often now on the forums, but it can still happen.
I am not technical, so I only speak to the symptoms of the scenario. It seems that, under certain conditions, when the Windows operating system crashes, open Scrivener docs become corrupted. While auto-save generally works, in this scenario, as you’ve found, auto-save won’t help you. (ETA: I just noticed in your posts you said your PC “froze” not “crashed”, but in the end if the result is an unplanned/forced reboot without shutting apps down gracefully, I think the result is the same: corruption of open documents. Posters have also written of this occurring after sudden PC shutdowns due to power failures.)
The symptom is empty documents or documents whose contents have become strange symbols. Either way, the text in the live project is not recoverable, and the user must fall back to a zipped backup taken prior to the OS crash. This may be a flaw in Windows Scrivener, or it may be a flaw in the QT framework that Scrivener is built on, or it may be a flaw in the way the Windows file system handles files during system crashes. I don’t know. But I assume that it will always be a possible scenario, so I’ve implemented processes to mitigate the risk.
Until your PC stability situation improves, I strongly recommend you make the following backup setting and process changes to mitigate your (at the moment very high) risk:
Enable these settings via File > Options > Backup:
- Back up with each manual save
- Compress automatic backups as zip files
- Use date in backup files name
Set Retain backup files to Keep all backup files. (The usual recommendation is 25, but more on that below.)
With these settings, every time you press Ctrl-S a time-stamped zipped backup will be generated to your backup folder. Ctrl-S should feel familiar to use, as it’s similar to saving in MS Office and other Windows apps.
Keep Scrivener running as long as you like, but any time you need to step away be sure to hit Ctrl-S and watch the backup finish before you close your laptop’s lid. Also, if you’ve just written a significant amount of work, or even if you’ve just written a really fine paragraph, press Ctrl-S and make that backup. It should only take a matter of seconds, unless your project is massive. Get the “backup early & often” habit engrained.
I recommended above that you change setting Retain backup files to Keep all backup files. My rationale is that while you have this flakey PC situation, in the event of a restore, the more backups you have available to you the better. Also, with this setting, you don’t have to concern yourself with Scrivener’s automatic cleanup process removing older backups that you might want to keep. Instead, once a week or once a month or whatever time interval you choose, manually clean up your backup folder by deleting the zipped backups you no longer need to keep.
Hopefully you find some of this useful. Here’s a more detailed post I wrote a while ago on backups. It was written for v1 so the menu paths have changed, but everything else is still applicable.
Best,
Jim
4 Likes
That’s all good @JimRac .
If I may add:
That in my opinion is the best way to go about it. (Or at least that I know of. It being pretty much how I handle the matter.)
Only difference on my end:
Instead of linking Ctrl-S to backups, I use Ctrl-S for snapshots, and do my backups (a good bunch per sessions) using the Backup now icon (customized toolbar).
Then upload my most recent backup to Google drive – MANUALLY – everyday.
Just like was said in Jim’s extensive and highly accurate post:
If your gonna get up and walk away from your computer, launch a backup.
2 Likes
And also because Scrivener’s automatic backups are independent of the original project. (Which is, IMO, part of the definition of a “backup.”) You can move them, you can delete them, you can do whatever you want to them, and the original project won’t change. (Unless you restore the backup on top of it, which is hard to do accidentally.)
Why would closing the project often make the program unusable?
Look at it this way: the more often you make a backup, the less you can lose between backups.
That is also my preferred way. Relying on auto-backup means I need to think about auto-backup settings and staying on top of whether it’s working correctly. For me, if I’ve already got backups in mind, I might as well just make the backup manually whenever and as often as seems right. I let backups accumulate like dust bunnies and have the retain setting to “keep all.”
Yes from time to time I select the most recent and upload them to google drive as an offsite location.
I used to run the Google Drive app, and had synchronized Google Drives on multiple devices, so I could access common files. Then Google changed the app in a way that no longer works for me. But even then, I would never have tried to actually keep a live Scrivener project on GD and depend on it to keep the local drive in sync with the online version. It was nowhere near reliable enough for the fragility of a Scrivener project.
Based on what I read here about cloud issues, if I wanted to work on a Scrivener project on a different device, I’d rather work off a usb drive, and carry the work (even the primary copy) with me, than rely on a cloud service.
1 Like
FYI I find Dropbox, recommended by Scrivener, works reliably for me.
My experience with Dropbox is the same. I trust it with my live projects and it has been flawless.
I use OneDrive for my zipped backups and it has likewise been excellent.
Google Drive on the other hand is an unreliable, inconsistent mess for syncing. I only use it with apps specifically wired to it for storing their data. (eg. MindMup, Tabs Outliner)
1 Like