I’m working on a project, and am paranoid about backing up. I try back up to multiple locations, however, it’s more difficult that it should be. Instead of just choosing one location to back up to, why can’t I just choose 2 or 3 locations on my computer, on different drives, and have Scrivener generate backups to each of these locations?
Hopefully others feel this is worthy, but more importantly the devs could at this to the to do list, as it doesn’t seem like it would be difficult to implement, but would be something everyone could use and take advantage of.
I share your concerns, because I back up to two different external drives, and critical files I back up to Dropbox and other network servers. Yet I think your problem is not with Scrivener but the Mac OS.
You can’t save to multiple locations at the same time. The OS wants a specific location on the drive. You could possibly write a script to run a sequence of saves, to location A, then B, then C, etc. Or maybe there’s a special backup software that will do that for you; I’m not aware of any. Good luck!
I’m on Windows. Currently, I have my default save location to a folder inside my DropBox folder.
Even if it were a script, just something where I can choose multiple locations. It doesn’t matter if it happens in the background, just that I constantly don’t have to go:
Save as > choose a location and type the file name. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Why aren’t use using automatic backups for this? (Tools > Options > Backup.) That will allow you to have backups saved to a particular folder automatically on project open or close. For anything more than that, though, it would fall out of Scrivener’s domain and you should use specialist backup software.
I believe Keith just answered your question; you’ll have to look to other software to replicate your backups. On the Mac, there’s Time Machine, which will back up everything on your system. Drop box will upload copies to the cloud, and to any other computers (mac or windows) you have configured for your account. There are other backup systems that are more elaborate, but that should suffice, and it’s all free-to-you, and easy to set up.
Also, in case this wasn’t clear, you can have the automatic backups in Scrivener back up to one location (say a sync folder that will automatically then copy them to other computers and that will be monitored by your external backup service along with other important directories on your system) and then use File >Back Up > Back Up To… to manually back up to another location such as an external drive that isn’t always plugged in.
I believe the intent of this original post was to suggest that adding a multiple save location option would be useful. I’d certainly use it.
Save to: Dropbox/My Scrivener Projects
: C/Writing/My Scrivener Projects
:G/My Scrivener Projects
Yes, sure, there are manual ways and external software backup methods. But the point is to add this functionality. It wouldn’t have to multi-backup to all locations on the fly or even on close; it could simply be an option added to the manual save feature.
As previously answered, MacOS save function saves to one specific location you nominate the first time you save. You can do a manual save to a second location, though but much work remembering where everything is.
As also previously answered, there are simple ways to achieve something similar to what you want. Set up a cloud service and synch the save folder to that service. Even set up a second cloud service to synch the Scrivener automatic backups. enough fee options out there. 4 Copies should be enough to satisfy most any need.
L&L goes well beyond most software developers in providing an automated backup built in. Anything beyond is a user choice.