Hi, my wife is the writer. I’m her IT support helping set up Scrivener so she can use it interchangeably on her desktop and laptop. As I understand it, L&L recommends placing the master .scriv packet in a Dropbox folder. I’ve done that. What’s the best way to manage local backups? The auto-backups that Scrivener makes are saving to her hard drive, and then are synced between devices. Good method? And if I want to have a local copy of the .scriv, what’s the best way to do that? Thanks!
Hi and welcome. Some friendly advice for you.
Make sure the folder containing the Scrivener projects is set to Make Available Offline. Scrivener needs the entire project (MacOS package/folder with lots of files) fully available on the local drive at all times. Also double check that iCloud isn’t going to do the same thing to the project (i.e. move it to the cloud to “help” you out).
Make sure that Scrivener is closed and the Dropbox sync is finished before shutting down the computer so you don’t get incomplete syncs. (The automatic quit feature in Scrivener can help with this as well). A project can not be open on multiple computers at the same time.
I would recommend setting your backups to use zip files and put the date in the name. Set the number of backup files to a higher number so you don’t accidentally loose something you need. (I have mine set to not automatically delete backup files and I go in and clean the backup folder every so often. But that’s just me.)
I do not sync my backups between systems, but then I’m also frequently backing up (and checkpointing - I have the manual save set to take a checkpoint and also backup) my projects so I’ve never had an issue with needing a backup from the other system. But that’s just me.
For a local copy of the project, I would recommend using File → Back Up → Back Up To…
I would be careful with using Save As… because it leaves you in the new project you just created (if I recall correctly - I don’t use it).
Hope this helps.
2 Likes
If you are using Dropbox as recommended, with the Dropbox app installed on both machines, and projects saved to the local Dropbox folder, and the folder set as Make Available Offline, you will have a local project copy on each machine that is synced. The risk is of course if your make a mess of a project on one machine without realising, the mess will automatically sync to the other if you subsequently open the project on the second machine with it connected to the internet.
Having automatic backups set to an external hard drive/NAS, or to a different cloud service with ensure there is always a copy available from a different source in the vent of catastrophic failure.
I also don’t recommend using Save As for any backup purposes. As per previous response, it creates a new project that is automatically the top of the recent projects list and it seems numerous people have lost track of which is the current project, resulting in lost work.
2 Likes
I have certain Scrivener projects in my Dropbox folder — the one’s I might want to access on another device. My Scrivener automatic backups are saved to the hard drive of the machine I am using — not to a cloud service. There is no significant “access” benefit to sharing those backup projects to the cloud. (When do I ever have to crack open a scriv backup project? Virtually never.) And as someone mentioned, if you are clouding those backups as a safety measure, yeah, I would not put them on the same cloud service.
Every ten days my main machine gets backed up to one of two external hard drives.
2 Likes
My Scrivener zipped backups are backed up to a cloud service so that in the event of a catastrophic system issue that corrupts my projects, I have immediate access those files on another device. My system backs up daily, because I choose not to hope that it will put off a failure until immediately after the time I choose to do a backup, whatever that period might be. I also make a separate bootable backup weekly.
In my experience, Dropbox does Not play well with apple time machine. I have a large number of scrivener projects littering my hard drive, many of which Dropbox offloaded to save me hard drive space. This resulted in Time machine zeroing out the project during backup which translated into zeroed out projects when I rebuilt the machine - from either repair or upgrade.
I solved the problem by discontinuing my Dropbox subscription
The other way to solve it is to tell Dropbox to dammit not offload anything.
3 Likes
This is what I would expect with any service that “saves space” on the local hard drive. If the file isn’t there, there’s nothing for Time Machine to back up.
As noted, whatever service you choose, we strongly recommend that it be configured to keep Scrivener projects available offline.
1 Like