[LH4063] The project will now be closed

Scrivener Windows Beta (Archived)
1

It’s been over five years now since this was reported. and as of May 2016, it was supposedly fixed:

https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/retry-for-missing-file-path/27292/1

According to this, when Windows hibernates or a removable disk is accidentially ejected so Scrivener can’t find the project path anymore, it is supposed to offer a retry. Unfortunately, in the current Beta it doesn’t.

"Project cannot be saved … disk was ejected … yada yada … Project will be closed now. "

The only options are “OK” and “Cancel”. “OK” will close the project, and so will “Cancel”.

2

Again.

Super-annoying.

3

A Retry button has been added. Give it a try in the next update, Still I would recommend being more careful and avoid the need of the Retry button as much as possible. If you still miss this feature after so many years, it means that you come into this trap very often, which is an open door for even bigger problems. Hopefully Scrivener will not cause you problems.

In one of your use cases you describe(I hibernate, take the SD stick and go to a coffee shop). Returning from the coffee shop with modified project, and pressing Retry will cause even bigger problems, as Retry assumes you keep on working from the place you left the project. If you have worked on the same file at home and at the coffee shop, your coffee shop edits might be overwritten and newly added documents missing, so use this with extreme caution. I personally would avoid using the Retry button ever, if I am not absolutely sure the project is in the same state I left it before. We have added an explicit warning about the Retry button usage. Mac has this Retry button too, so we have implemented one more Mac feature under Windows in the next release.

4

I really appreciate that. Actually, there are bunch of different scenarios leading to the same issue - accidential hibernation is just one of them. I also have an old E4200 where the SD card sticks out way too far (default misdesign by Dell) - all it takes is to pick up the laptop on the wrong spot to eject the SD card. That is in fact what happened to me when I vented my frustration yesterday.

(And I agree the scenario you described would be asking for trouble - no worries, I wouldn’t do that.)

Thanks again!

5

I can’t tell you how many users have reported lost projects and problems using a memory stick as a storage media while editing the project. For accidental edits, it might be OK, but using SD card as a storage for every day writing I would not recommend. It is slow, and more prone to breakage, among other things. I would edit my project on the HDD and export backups as often as possible on multiple SD cards, but not edit my project continuously on an SD card.

6

@tiho_d: Appreciate the well-meant advice, but keep in mind that everyone has their own circumstances and working environment. If you sit at the same machine every day, storing your data on that machine’s HD makes a lot of sense. For others working on different computers (or like in my case, laptops of very different sizes), the opposite may be true. Either way, regular backups are always key, as any data storage (SD or HD) can ultimately fail.

7

I would use Dropbox and sync between machines in your case.

8

So you would use Dropbox without internet access? That is impressive. :mrgreen:

9

I write on three different laptops. I write on trains, planes, in bars, restaurants, benches. Pretty much anywhere. I pick the laptop when I leave the house. The smallest one is a beefed up eeePC. Its great for writing, but very slow for everything else. If I had to start up and sync my eeePC before I leave the house, it would mean that I either had to skip syncing or skip leaving the house. :laughing:

10

I read tiho’s advice as to copy/move the project from your SD card/USB drive and open Scrivener against the local HD copy so Scrivener is working from reliable storage. When you’re done with Scrivener, then you close it and can move the updated project back to your SD card/USB drive. That is a couple of small extra steps, but it also drastically reduces the risk of something going funky and eating your data. You’re reducing the number of writes to your removable storage to a single stream of operations and doing it in a situation where you won’t run into suspend/hibernate issues with open files.

11

Three Blind Lice, sorry for the intrusion—your situation appears very similar to mine (if not to say quite typical). I also use Scrivener at both home PC and office PC practically every day, and (not so often, but regularly) on my laptop. It means I have to move my data constantly. But there are more reliable ways than from a single flash or something. It is enough to have, say, an external HDD and an appropriate sync app like SyncBackPro, or GoodSync, etc. to sync your data between your devices in a couple of mouse-clicks, automatically,—it is easy, fast enough, very reliable (at least in my experience of syncing Scrivener data folders) and greatly improve general security of your data as with this approach you have a rather actual copy on every device you work on. And tiho_d is right—it is mandatory if what you are writing is important for you.

P.S. And devinganger’s advice is not less effective, if you move just your Scrivener folders between your devices.

12

So first of all: I really appreciate that the feature has been added. To me it’s an act of respect to fellow writers. It acknowleges that everyone has their own way of working. It also acknowleges that, where possible, software should adapt to human needs, rather than the needs having to adapt to the software. As a result, everyone is discussing this topic from a position of choice. The button is (or rather will be) there and everyone can either use it or ignore it. Also makes this discussion much more pleasant.

@DEVINGANGER: I’ve tried this in the past, but guess what, it led to data loss. I ended up with different versions of my work on different machines, and started overwriting newer versions with older ones. Compare that to an SD card failing and having to replace it with last week’s backup: The result is virtually the same, except that I’ve overwritten my own work more than once, but have yet to lose any data to SD card failure. So, given my very personal circumstances, I have simply chosen the smaller risk.

@biblioman: I see substantial differences. Unlike your situation, all my writing machines live in the same household, which means I never have to carry SD cards around (which I consider risky). And all of my computers are old and fairly slow by modern standards. Like I tried to explain above, in many real-life scenarios I simply don’t have the time to boot up the computer I want to take with me and make sure the data is in sync. Means I either can’t take the computer at all (not being able to write is also a way to lose work) or I accidentially work on an outdated version (which has happened to me in the past). Yet another way to lose data. Switching SD cards, on the other hand, never gave me these problems.

Here’s an interesting anecdote about one-lane railroad tracks: They are always prone to human errors and horrible accidents, and no ever-so-sophisticated technical solution has been able to really fix that problem. Supposedly, the safest one-lane track is in India: They use some kind of huge ring, only one exists, and if you don’t have it, you can’t go, plain and simple. Easiest way to stop a collision with an oncoming train, and 100% foolproof. My SD card is like that ring, it’s a foolproof way to make sure I always work on the most recent version and it works better for me than any ever-so-sophisticated syncing technique possibly could.

And once again, any data storage can fail. Ironically, the biggest data loss I ever suffered was from a HD failure on my main computer. Lesson learned: If your work is important to you, always make backups, no matter where you store your primary copy. :wink:

13

Three Blind Lice, again, sorry for unnecessary advice. Your experience seems to be quite exotic already, but I think it could be made even more so. All best wishes. ))

14

You can come up with all the clever hacks you want, but if that track runs through a flood plain, there’s not much you can do to keep it from getting flooded on a regular basis. Yes, any storage can fail – no one has claimed otherwise – but some storage medium fail FAR more frequently than others. Expecting the software to jump through hoops to try to prevent the user from using a riskier medium is at best a recipe for diminishing returns.

There are seldom technological solutions to behavioral problems.

15

All I was trying to say is that everybody’s situation is different. As far as I am concerned, my behavioral problems (me overwriting my own work) seem to be bigger than the technological ones (failing SDs destroying my work), so I require different solutions. This has nothing to do with expecting software to jump through hoops for me, quite the opposite - it’s me who would rather not jump through hoops for a piece of software.

It’s like Microsoft trying to save me from evil malware by randomly rebooting my computer behind my back and carelessly stamping out any open files or unsaved work there might be. There might be people who are happy with this (otherwise Microsoft wouldn’t get away with it), but as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have a choice. If nothing else, a “Thanks for the recommendation, but I’d rather not” option is always a polite thing to add. Otherwise, we will ultimately end up here:

youtube.com/watch?v=uxde0IImnWs

(Politely bowing out of this thread.)

16

I know you said you’re out of the thread, but I have to correct this misapprehension for anyone else reading along. Microsoft isn’t forcing updates and reboots to protect you – they’re doing it to protect all the other computers that could be affected by the malware that does get into your system if you don’t apply updates in a timely fashion.

Choices have consequences. Those consequences are not always apparent, and we cannot always avoid them.