I’m running Windows 10 on a Microsoft Surface with Scrivener 2. Recently, my computer stopped telling me when it reached 20% and would just shut down on a low battery (separate problem). However, Scrivener is supposed to auto-save when I stop typing for more than two seconds. The first time it happened, I thought maybe I had just been on a writing frenzy and hadn’t given Scrivener time to backup, but this time I had stopped several times so I know Scrivener had a chance to save. When I went into my files to retrieve the .rtf file after I got my computer restarted, this is all that came up: You can see that in the Scrivener file, the Scene 14 file shows that there is text and characters, but nothing. Has anyone found a way to restore? This is the second time this has happened and it lost about 1,000 words this time. I’m not sure I’m up for a third time.
See this thread for similar discussion: [url]https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/blue-screen-and-lost-work/40026/1]
I hope you can recover your work.
Jim
If you search on variations of ‘power loss corrupts files’ using Scrivener in the search phrase and not, it appears that a file that is open during a power loss is susceptible to corruption no matter what program it is from. The fact that it is still open when the power fails is what makes it susceptible. So it may be an operating system file management weakness rather than it being a Scrivener-specific thing.
Word has an ‘Open and Repair’ tool. There are also proprietary RTF repair tools that might work.
Good point. I’ve suspected this myself.
I was going to add, Scrivener’s real job (it appears to me) during the ongoing project is to maintain the integrity of the Binder. It’s ‘just’ an XML file, but keeping that part in order is what holds it all together. Without that, the project is lost unless you want to go through each RTF file and reconstruct it. It’s actually a good thing that damage is limited to a single RTF file when there is a system failure.