I was working in Scrivener when it completely froze. I left it a while but it didn’t recover. I had to perform a hard reboot, and when the file reopened, the ‘Text’ file I’d been working in was completely blank. I had not only lost the last few minutes or hours of work, it had completely removed the work I’d completed before the session. How can I get this work back? It was about 20 hours worth.
Where are your backups and how recent?
Did you look for recovered files at the bottom of the binder? Save the damaged project with version of name for old project and compare to most recent backup. Did you take snapshots of the file?
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In addition to @GoalieDad’s questions,
- where do you store the project? In a folder that is synced to a third-party sync service?
- Scrivener will normally save the file you are working on on every 2-seconds of inactivity. By chance have to changed that setting or worked continously so that there never was “inactivity” (unlikely)?
- In that 20 hours of work did you ever close the project so that the automatic backups can be made? Where are your backups stored?
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Thanks for the responses.
Backups are stored locally and last one was a few days ago i.e. Not within the time frame concerned. Snapshots I am not sure about. How do they work.
To elaborate on the issue, the work I was doing was editing/adding to an existing text file i.e. It was not blank and has not been for a while. But now after scrivener/my laptop froze, everything contained within it has been removed. It has affected only this file, the rest is up to date.
How about the other questions?
With no backups or saves, it cannot be Scrivener’s fault, IMHO.
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Answers to your second two questions are no and no. I get I’m responsible for backups. Usually I’m pretty good but last week I was not. Still, the system crashed and did something weird in deleting only one text file while the rest was fine. Why would it do that if it was anything but a fault?
Are you aware that there is an area in options to set automatic backups? This would avoid a situation on days a user is less cautious about backups.
Further to that where is your work in progress, in a cloud or on an external drive?
Twenty hours also seems excessive to be working in one document. As a rule, Scrivener autosaves every few seconds of inactivity.
Hope that helps to track down your riddle.
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That option is actually on by default, for exactly this reason.
Check the Options → Backup tab to see where Scrivener’s automatic backups are stored.
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I sent the files to scrivener help and they’ve just confirmed whatever I lost no longer exists. Auto backup was on but I didn’t close the programme for a while. It has autosaved of course, hence the problem. 20 hours is not excessive - thats the amount of time I’ve worked in the text file, about 5,000 words written and re-written. Maybe I can recover it in 5-10 now, I don’t know. As I said, it wiped it all. All my fault, I know. Thanks for trying to help anyway. At least I learnt a bit more how scrivener works, should I continue to use it.
20 hours without saving (automatic on inactivity or manual instruction by menu or keyboard) and no backup (automatic or manual) is, for most people, excessive.
I am sorry for your loss. Perhaps this experience will help others.
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It saved on inactivity. I hadn’t backed up.
If look at file>options> backup is choice to backup on close and under general not sure which part on vacation is option to auto close if inactive X minutes.
Long shot trick create new blank project and import damaged project. Scrivener will try to retrieve info. Long shot but hey
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I gave it a try but no dice. Thanks anyway.
Sorry about the loss of your words, @np7675.
Sometimes–not always, but sometimes–PC or Scrivener crashes will corrupt the document that was open. Sounds like that’s what happened to you.
Having a better understanding of Scriv’s built-in backup system would be a good idea. If you continue to use Scrivener, I suggest you read this post I wrote a long while back on Backups. It was written for Scriv v1, but none of the backup features have changed except for menu options. You can skip the SYNCING section.
Also, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to crack open the Scriv user manual and have a look at section 5.2 “Backing Up Your Work” and Appendix B9 “Backup”. Only a few pages, and well worth your time.
Digesting this information will go a long way toward ensuring this doesn’t happen to you again.
Best,
Jim
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Thanks @JimRac, kind of you to share the information. I will certainly take a look and be more careful in the future.
This thread scared me. I pretty much didn’t autobackup nor would I shutdown Scrivener for days on end.
I’m 36000 words into my novel and I can’t afford to let this happen to me.
Basically, thank you for the heads up. If it happened to you then it could happen to me.
I’m all backed up now. Autobackup is on with backups being saved to cloud and I will make sure I shutdown scrivener when I’m not using it.
Gutted for you though @np7675
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Great to hear you’ve improved your process. Fear can be a wonderful motivator. 
Just to be clear, this particular issue would only impact the document(s) that are actually open in Scrivener’s editor at the time of the crash. So if it happened, you wouldn’t lose all 36k words of your project. At risk would only be the chapter or scene or beat you were actually editing that moment.
Unless, that is, all 36k words of your novel are in one huge document. And if that’s the case, you’re really working against pretty much all of Scrivener’s strengths.
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I would also add that Scrivener is quite stable, especially on Windows. Crashing is very rare, and on top of that losing an entire chunk of text on crash is even more rare. It probably takes the unlikely event of multiple things happening at once—a system crash or power outage, auto-save happening in that very instant, and the thing you are typing in being auto-saved. In most cases, where a crash happens, not all of that aligns down to the microsecond, and all you might lose is a sentence or two. On top of that, in theory that sequence of events shouldn’t even result in the file being wiped. So there may be some additional factors involved in what the OP saw.
Leaving your project open for ages is no great risk, I do it all of the time. But you will benefit from tweaking the backup settings. I have it set to create one on manual save, since saving is otherwise generally pointless. Save a few times a day, whenever you feel a redundant copy would be good to take, and you’ll be fine—better than most in fact, who generally only get one backup per session.
There is another option in General: Saving that takes snapshots of all modified items on manual save. This adds another layer of redundancy since those get backed up as well. Use it with care though, as it can lead to bloat in larger projects. There is advice for routinely clearing out old snapshots in the manual, where the setting itself is discussed.
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