USB stick best practices

[scrivtime]

The near-disaster:
I like to write on both a desktop and laptop. Until yesterday, I successfully kept my project file in Dropbox, giving plenty of time for the project to sync before switching machines. I had a great writing day on Dec 26 on my desktop. I backed up to zip, then I closed Scrivener. Last night Dec 27, I opened the project from my laptop (so 24 hours later), but there was major file corruption. My folder and document structure remained, but text had been stripped from many of them. Yikes! No idea what happened, since I didn’t do anything different than usual.

Minor heart attack, etc. Opening my most recent zip backup from Dec 26 via my laptop (backup zips also stored on Dropbox) also showed the same corruption. Double heart attack.

It wasn’t backups that saved me, oddly, but opening the working project file from my desktop machine (in a Dropbox folder for automatic syncing) from my great writing day on Dec 26. It was as I had left it, thank heavens. Clearly some kind of major sync error to my laptop’s Dropbox folder. I see you don’t recommend Dropbox or other sync services for Scriv projects, and I definitely won’t do that any more!

My questions:
An open, synced Scrivener project is clearly quite fragile, but I do need to work on the same project file from two computers (not at the same time). Here forward, I plan to store the Scriv project file on a USB stick and open/use the project file from that stick. So, a few questions:

1. Can you confirm that running my project directly from the stick is the best way to go? My desktop has Time Machine and online backup with Crashplan, so I would think copying the working project file to my desktop and running it from there would have the same risks as I experienced with Dropbox.

2. What disk format for the USB stick will make Scrivener happiest (Extended Journaled/ GUID partition map, etc)? I use Mac Sierra 10.12.6 on both machines. I use Scrivener 3.1.5

3. Of course I will make redundant zip backups when I close the program after each writing session. But how much do I have to worry about losing a day of writing when autosaving to this USB stick? In other words, do I need to make hourly zip backups of my project? Is it the syncing of an open file that’s the danger, or is even an unsynced open Scriv project equally delicate and at risk for corruption during local autosaves?

4. I can’t imagine that zipped Scriv backups are at any more risk of corruption than any other file type when backed up with Time Machine/Crashplan. Am I correct?

Sorry for the long list of questions. If I can nail down the best practices now, hopefully I won’t have any more problems. Thanks for any thoughts.

[kewms]

It is untrue that we “don’t recommend” Dropbox. Using a project on multiple systems does carry some additional risks, but they are completely manageable. Best practices for Dropbox synchronization can be found here:
scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb … c-services

Your description sounds like a textbook synchronization error. My guess would be that the sync from the desktop to Dropbox was interrupted before the changed files had fully transferred.

On USB sticks:

• We do not recommend opening a project directly from a USB stick. They are generally slower and less reliable than your main hard drive.

• Copying from a USB stick to the local machine and back should be essentially risk free. A direct connection via a USB port should be both faster and more reliable than any internet service. Plus the original version is right there in the unlikely event that you do discover any errors.

• Remember that copying to/from a USB stick is not a synchronization operation. That is, you are responsible for keeping track of which version is where: Mac OS will happily overwrite a new version with an old one if you let it. I would recommend using distinctive file names to help you.

• ZIPped Scrivener backups should be robust against most common forms of corruption.

Katherine

[scrivtime]

Thanks for the quick response!

Hmm. I looked again at best practices for Dropbox and can’t see what I did wrong.

Never, ever open the same project on more than one computer at a time. I did not do this.

Do not open the project before your Dropbox folder is fully synced. The closed project had 24 hours to sync on an open internet connection.

Do not shut down or sleep your computer before Dropbox finishes uploading. Computer is set to not sleep. I did not shut it down.

Turn on automatic backups. This is turned off but I manually back up to zip every time I’m about to close Scrivener. I don’t do it automatically because sometimes I quit Scrivener several times a day and don’t want the clutter of too many backups. My manual backup of that day turned out to have the same corruption as the main project file. Not sure what that means. I got lucky that I didn’t have to rely on the previous backup and lose one day of work.

Reduce auto-save frequency. I have Google Fiber, so upload speed should not be a factor. I’m not aware of any brief interruption in internet connection. I definitely had service most of that 24 hour period since I was using internet to do other things.

By “textbook,” do you mean user error, or do you mean just one of those faceless computer gremlins we all battle at times? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but I’m leery of using Dropbox again since I can’t find anything that I was supposed to do differently.

You recommend I copy the master file from the USB stick to whatever local machine I’m using, rather than running directing from the stick. I can do that, and I can keep track of always saving back to the stick with name conventions and making diligent backups etc. So thanks for those recommendations.

To be clear: It sounds like the fact that my desktop makes both Time Machine and Crashplan incremental backups will not break an open Scrivener project. The risk would be in relying on any .scriv backup files those services might generate, though, right? Meaning, I should consider .scriv files backed up by those two services as discardables, and should only consider .zip files I make myself as reliable backups. Correct?

Also, what disk formatting do you recommend for the USB stick?

[kewms]

@scrivtime

Do not open the project before your Dropbox folder is fully synced. The closed project had 24 hours to sync on an open internet connection.

It had 24 hours to upload from the desktop. But how long did it have to download to the laptop? Laptops are generally configured to sleep when not in use by default, in which case no synchronization would have occurred until you started using the system the next day.

Turn on automatic backups. This is turned off but I manually back up to zip every time I’m about to close Scrivener. I don’t do it automatically because sometimes I quit Scrivener several times a day and don’t want the clutter of too many backups. My manual backup of that day turned out to have the same corruption as the main project file. Not sure what that means. I got lucky that I didn’t have to rely on the previous backup and lose one day of work.

From your description, it sounded like the problem backups were created on the laptop, which we already know didn’t have an accurate copy of the project. A backup created from the known good copy on the desktop should have been fine.

By “textbook,” do you mean user error, or do you mean just one of those faceless computer gremlins we all battle at times? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but I’m leery of using Dropbox again since I can’t find anything that I was supposed to do differently.

I mean those are exactly the symptoms I would expect to see if a synchronization error had occurred. I’m not speculating on what might have caused it.

To be clear: It sounds like the fact that my desktop makes both Time Machine and Crashplan incremental backups will not break an open Scrivener project. The risk would be in relying on any .scriv backup files those services might generate, though, right? Meaning, I should consider .scriv files backed up by those two services as discardables, and should only consider .zip files I make myself as reliable backups. Correct?

I’m not aware of any corruption issues with Time Machine or Crashplan backups. Of course, you can configure things so that Time Machine and Crashplan also have copies of your own ZIP backups.

Also, what disk formatting do you recommend for the USB stick?

I didn’t answer this one because I don’t have an opinion. Whatever MacOS recommends would be fine. Note that not all Mac-compatible file systems will work with Windows, which might be a consideration if you ever need to transfer the project to a PC.

Katherine

[scrivtime]

Thanks for taking the time to make a detailed response. Very helpful.

I’m good about checking before I open a Scrivener project that Dropbox has completed sync in the download direction (green check mark for Dropboxed file). I can’t be absolutely positive if I did that last night or not, so that’s a possible explanation for why the project was corrupted when I opened it.

It wouldn’t explain why the previous day’s backup file was corrupted in the same way as the main project file that I opened. That mystery gives me the heebie-jeebies. But thanks for answering my questions and trying to help. Happy new year to you.

[xiamenese]

May I also suggest that keeping your active projects and your backups—however you create them—on the same cloud service is not a good idea.

My active projects are either on Dropbox or Sync, my zipped backups are currently on Box, though I have used iCloud for backups.

Mark