This is a strange posting by DropBox. My guess is that they were getting reports from users regarding Scrivener, and since it is a Mac application, lumped it together with this which, as far as I understand, shouldn’t have any kind of negative impact on Scrivener projects. It doesn’t use resource forks—or even the bundle bit for that matter.
This isn’t to say that the original advisor can be ignored; just the resource forks have nothing to do with it.
I wish I’d come here to see the warnings about DropBox. I switched to it four or five days ago as a temporary replacement for Time Machine, as the external hard drive died. I’m not using it to open the files from, but simply as a backup.
It was kind of a comedy of errors really, some my fault for forgetting a cardinal rule of dragging and copying files on a Mac. I just went to backup my novel file in DropBox, and my first mistake was forgetting that simply dragging and dropping would not ‘copy’, but ‘cut’. This is probably the biggest part of this mess really.
I finished typing a scene, posted a quick Twitter about how happy I was that I would finish revising my previous novel just in time to start fresh for NaNoWriMo, and then proceeded to back it up. When it was pasting into the DropBox folder, I got an error saying that one of the picture files in my research folder was in use, and I realized that I had forgotten to close Scrivener. So I did, checking to make sure Scrivener had auto-saved.
When I clicked the ‘OK’ button on the error though, Finder crashed and I had to Force Quit.
So the copy failed, but because I had make my earlier mistake, the original file was no longer on my hard drive. I hoped that maybe it had made it to DropBox only without the image file, but when I opened the backup, there was the copy I had saved only days earlier. However, having worked my tush off to try to be done for NaNoWriMo, I have lost five fairly large chapters that compose the lead up to and nearly the entirety of my climax.
Needless to say, I’m buying a new TimeMachine drive tomorrow.
So call this my cautionary tale. 
If you do use DropBox as a backup, don’t forget to ‘copy’ not ‘cut’ and remember to close Scrivener first. 
Rosamune, I’m sorry to hear of your troubles … that must be extremely disheartening. I only lost a small amount of data when using DropBox as the location of the active file and suffering a minor network problem, no doubt all my fault.
But don’t give up on DropBox … it’s great. Just simplify things for yourself … set “Save Backup to” with DropBox as your target and setting the backup to be zipped by clicking the box in the dialog. No need to remember to “copy” and as a single zipped file your project will be saved more reliably on the cloud than as the scores of little files it actually is.
Also, go to your DropBox online and check whether you have any copies of it there by showing the deleted files.
Mark
Thanks for the support.
I did check the DropBox site and the copy there wasn’t any better. That said, after a dinner of comfort food, I’ve managed to create empty scene files with as full synopsis’ as I could remember and even managed to rewrite one of them in full. It looks like I lost 10 (now 9) full scenes and another bunch will just need to be revised again. How many days until NaNoWriMo again? 
I’ve been writing for long enough that I can say that I’m surprised I haven’t lost something sooner, and it could have been a lot worse. You only ever let it happen once though.
Dropbox keeps versions of your files. For packages, like .scriv, you’ll need to navigate into the files and look at them. I’d probably copy the text out and re-insert it via Scrivener than trying to restore the files directly.
Perhaps this would help?
FYI I’ve been using Dropbox and Scrivener flawlessly since Dropbox came out - opening projects on different computers without incident. The only issue I had was I once opened Scrivener before Dropbox updated and I had a previous version onscreen. But it fixed itself. Just thought I’d share.
Babyfett, thanks for your experiences. The issue isn’t so much whether or not one or two people can use it just fine, but whether enough people are having a contrary experience. Before this post was put up on the board, we were getting several “Help my project is corrupted!” posts a month, and nearly 100% of the time it was due to DropBox or services like it (but nevertheless giving Scrivener a bit of a bad reputation). So a post like this is more about mitigating a baseline level of genuine data loss, than saying something is completely impossible. Since this post has gone up, data loss and project corrupt has virtually vanished.
Just as a data point… I have been backing up to dropbox using a symlink to my scrivener directories. It has worked just fine despite the fact that multiple files often need to be transferred. (I don’t work on multiple computers; this is just for backup. I could imagine that if two people were trying to work on the same set of files at the same time there would be difficulties).
I did increase Scrivener’s time before autosave to reduce network activity, but this was not due to any concerns about correctness. Dropbox has seemed quite solid for me.
(I make local backups as well … as everyone should
Thank you Amber.
Ran into this problem just this morning. For the first time tried saving a Scrivener file to DropBox and then continuing on at my office. Needless to say it didn’t work. Your suggestion to back up the project to Dropbox as a zip file worked to perfection. I can open that file at the office and pick up where I left off.
How many times do you get to find the answer to your question as the top post in any forum? It’s a good day!
I’ve been using DropBox ‘live’ without problems, but I’m extremely disciplined about shutting down Scrivener, never having a file open on two computers, etc. But I’m human and I might blow it some day.
How about a feature that automatically creates a backup into a specified folder whenever you shut down Scrivener? A checkbox in the Preferences would enable you to turn this feature on or off.
Now, whether you are using dropbox or not, you get a backup every time you close Scrivener.
This exact feature is coming in 2.0. You set your backup folder in the Preferences and choose whether you want a backup to be made to that folder when you open or close a project (or both), and whether it should be zipped).
All the best,
Keith
Zipping my backup onto my mounted iDisc is working fine.
An automated import and merge / validate status function for those files would be nice!
I just save a backup file to the hard drive. I then copy it onto Interarchy (a Mac FTP app). It then gets simultaneously uploaded to MobileMe iDisk and Amazon S3. That way, I have a local copy and two remote copies. Better safe than sorry.
Regards
I only started using Scrivener a couple days ago, but here is my experience.
MobileMe iDisk HATES SCRIVENER’s GUTS lol. It was okay with Jer’s Novel Writer and it’s method of files, but my iDisk was having seizures and wasn’t wanting to sync anything, taking forever, etc when I switched to Scrivener. I decided to give my DropBox a shot, and it syncs any changes within a few seconds and never has issues.
That said, I use DropBox for ‘live’ backup and iDisk for all my zipped backups. Just in case :mrgreen: But for what it’s worth, DropBox 0.7.110 and Scrivener 1.54 have been going well these past few days, and I
ve spent a lot of time where it would be saving a LOT as I port all my work over to the new software.
Out of curiosity, is there any risk of corruption of a Scrivener file if it is zipped or is it safer zipped for backup purposes. For myself I like to save it both ways.
If I understand your question correctly: I’m not sure there’s any intrinsic difference between saving and zipping for back-up and saving and zipping by other means, other than that in the former case the file is automatically timed and dated.
I find it very easy and convenient to use the back-up/zipping functionality in conjunction with Dropbox.
No, you misunderstand me. I’m wondering whether zipping has any dangers in it; is there the possibility of the file being corrupted within the zip and not being fully retrievable.
No - as long as you check the zip unzips fine, then the zip is a flat file so the files within it cannot be affected. The only danger is if the zip file itself becomes corrupted because of a partial copy, but this danger is only the same as for any other file on your system.
All the best,
Keith
The only disadvantage to zip is that it is a bit “all the eggs in one basket”. If the bytes of the file get corrupted because of media glitches or what have you, then it can result in an archive that doesn’t uncompress. With a Scrivener project all of the data is distributed amongst many files, so the possibility of the whole thing corrupting is much less (though if one of the critical files gets damaged that could be a world of hurt). On the other hand, zip files are more portable, and less liable to get accidentally messed up on other operating systems.
That said, the chances of this happening are pretty slim. Back in the days of floppy discs, early flash drive tech, and cheap CD-R media, it was much more common to see files get corrupted in transit or storage. I can see no reason to save both the compressed version and the full project. If you want redundancy, you’d be better off saving two zip files and putting them in different places. Different places should optimally be two different geographic locations (DropBox would count as one).
Thanks for all the help.