I’m unclear about the difference between Scriv’s “save” and “backup to” commands – specifically, whether they indicate different destinations for saved files. Back in the dark days (a few weeks back) when I worked in MS word a hit of the “save” button would save the file to my computer’s documents folder and at the end of every writing session I would manually backup the file by dragging a copy to my external drive.
Ideally, I would like this arrangement: copies of the latest version of my book in two locations and am looking for the best way to do this.
So…
Are “save” and “backup” in Scriv one and the same? That is to say: once you set the location for “backup to” is this also the location that files are saved to when you hit “save”?
If not, is there a way, other than manually (pulling down the menu to one location first and then to another), to save (or backup) to two different locations?
Unless you’ve changed the default autosave frequency, you should ignore the fact that the “Save” command exists–it basically doesn’t do anything. Using the File|Backup command doesn’t change where you’re project is being saved to; it just saves off a backup.
If you want to automatically save in two places at once, you could create a folder action, but probably it’s better to just make your Scrivener projects part of your regular backup routine.
To understand the difference, you need to bear in mind that a Scrivener project is not really a document–it is a whole collection of documents.
If you hit Save, you don’t do much more than write (i.e. resave) the state of your current text document into the project file on your hard drive. (Though, as mamster says, this kind of saving happens automatically during idle time, so you don’t need to worry about it.)
When you hit Backup To, you will be making a backup copy of your entire project.