Backup recovery

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
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@leitskev I apologize in advance if I repeat things others have said, as I’ve only skimmed this thread. :scream_cat:

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

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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.

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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.)

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Why would closing the project often make the program unusable?

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Look at it this way: the more often you make a backup, the less you can lose between backups.

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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.

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FYI I find Dropbox, recommended by Scrivener, works reliably for me.

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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)

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