Hi, I’m a newbe to scrivener. When I write, I use paper, scrivener app, my labtop and old desktop interchangeably.
In the past, I have used word and one note to gather my ideas with an external drive which worked great but I am growing to like this program and would prefer just using it with an external drive.
So; I have tried to use an external drive for scrivener projects and it doesn’t always save properly or open properly moving from desktop to laptop.
What am I doing wrong? Is this a good practice?
At the moment, I decided to use scrivener in one location and only use external drive for backup (which is working well in terms of no errors) but this limits me in terms of being able to ‘move’ from varying platforms.
Recommendations to solve the error in saving projects and getting scrivener to open properly without creating a new save location every time from an external drive? I hope this makes sense. I have read the formus on this topic and haven’t really found my exact scenario.
Your latest backup is the same update of the project as your saved WIP, as long as you’ve set it to “Backup on project close” under File > Options > Backups.
If you’ve selected zipped backups, you’d need to unzip the backup first, typically elsewhere to where your last project save was done on the second machine’s C: drive.
I wouldn’t open projects on a D: or whatever other drive as the Scrivener app has dependencies on the C: drive of every machine, like preferences, layouts, compile formats etc. that may be affected.
If all is fine with the opened backup, you can always save it (File > Save As) to overwrite the last WIP on the second machine.
If you follow a strict process, things shouldn’t go wrong. Things do go wrong when you skip a step.
Wash and repeat when working your way back to the first machine.
Of course, you could experiment with Scrivener’s cloud services capabilities, which is simpler. Dropbox works well in the Windows environment.
If you haven’t work through the Interactive Tutorial project available from the Scrivener Help menu that covers cloud syncing basics.
What specifically is the external drive? We don’t recommend opening a project directly from a USB stick as they tend to be relatively slow and unreliable. Fine for data transfer, but not ideal for routine use. External drives that are designed for routine use do exist, though, and one of those should be fine.
Could you explain the (mis)behavior you are seeing in more detail?
Hi Kevitec57,
Thanks for the involved reply! I appreciate the file path’s that you have included as well. I am still learning. I have run through the many tutorials in the program and online…but I learn best by doing so to speak.
Thanks also for the advise about the C and D drives. In the past I normally saved to an external drive since I have had a computer hardrive crash on me…I lost 7 hours of project time and since then, I do not want to ever repeat that.
I will try using backups to move between machines and see where it goes. Thanks!
Flash drives have always been my go to, I can’t move a hard drive from labtop to desktop? What’s the difference between SSD drive an USB drive? But i appreciate your input. I dont mean to sound dumb just dont know.
I have to get the error message exactly. But basically it would not re-find the exact project I was working on when I move from project from labtop to desktop and or/it would not let me save to a pre-existing project, when that was the project I was using…I would then have extra files for the same project? Kinda make sense.
…I think I just maybe have to work on my labtop and save it to the hardrive of the labtop and limit my interfaces bc I don’t want to mess up my many fictional books/projects I’m working on. I just finished importing them all from word and dont want to mess it up.
Wouldn’t find how? I wouldn’t expect the Recent Projects menu to be useful in a situation like this, but Windows Explorer or Scrivener’s Open Project menu should be fine.
Refusal to save points to either a permissions issue or an attempt to move the project without closing it first.
Generally speaking, an SSD drive will use higher quality chips and a more sophisticated controller than a USB stick. The controller especially matters for load balancing: flash memory has a limited lifetime (though it’s better now than it used to be), so you don’t want to be pounding away on any specific group of memory cells.
Ok, so using a SSD drive is safer is the gist? Then i’ll gladly buy one. I dont want it to die on me. I prefer to work off an external drive so I can go from my pc to labtop.
Thanks for taking the time to comment as well as thanks to all above who were very helpful.