Lost a whole day's work, can't find the file even in local backup?

[Christiaan]

One to be aware of for Mac users:

My Director thought he was going mad this morning. He'd been working on his Desktop yesterday and then put the file on the server at the end of the day.

The problem was when he came in this morning the file on the server was the wrong one, a file he'd last saved much earlier in the day.

There appeared to be no trace of the work he done. Not on the offsite backup, not on the local server backup, not in his local VW backup folder. Not even a search in the Finder for the last edited files located anything past 10 AM for that particular file.

Just as he was resigning himself to catching up 6 hours work (before he goes on holiday tomorrow no less) I thought I might as well check invisible files on his machine (i.e. those files with a . to the front of the file name on Mac OS X). And bingo, there it was. Something had obviously gone a bit wrong and he'd somehow he'd managed to end up working on the temporary save file.

While this hid the file from view in the Finder, as far as VW was concerned the file was just fine and he was just working on a normal file with a dot at the start of the filename. This in turn meant local VW backups were also hidden from view because they used the same file name.

So one to be aware of for Mac-based VW users and perhaps one for NV to sort out. At the very least perhaps local VW autosave should strip any dots from the front of a file name?

[Monadnoc]

You know I've had that happen to me and I thought I was going crazy. I've opened up a file and it was like the entire last session never existed. But I never figured out why, so I just started over. It was only a practice session, so not a big deal, and it hasn't happened again. Yet. But I suspect this happens from time to time. Now I'll know how to find it when the finder can't. Thanks for a very helpful tip. And great sleuthing.

Monadnoc

[Bob Holtzmann]

If you have Autosave enabled in the Preferences, you can save a backup to a folder -- I use the same location as the Vw file, and as extra precaution, the 2 most recent backups.

[Pat Stanford]

Disk space is cheap and you can make a lot of changes in a short time. I recently switched from timed backups to every 20 operations. When I was on timed, I backed up every 5 minutes and kept 12 copies so I had an hours worth of backups.

Now that I am on number of operations I am still keeping 12 copies.

Couple that with Time Machine and you should have a backup less than an hour old at all times.

I have a separate folder on my local disk that I use to store all of the backup copies from VW. That way I know where to look if I need them, but don't have to worry about multiple copies cluttering my working directories. It also makes it easier to delete the backups when I am in a mood to clean up.

[taoist]

Good points.

I am in the habit of saving after every change.

CTRL + S.

Habit from DOS days.

For revisions I make multiple copies as we usually do 3 schemes.

taoist

[Monadnoc]

I too have my autosave set to every five minutes. And I usually hit "Command-S" 4 or 5 times in between that time. But in this case, autosaving and saving does you no good. Everything is being autosaved/saved to invisible files. It's like you stepped into the Twilight Zone and all existence of any work you did the day before has disappeared into the Ether. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often. In fact, I'd say it was extremely rare. But next time, at least I'll know to look for invisible files.

Thanks again Christiaan.

Monadnoc

Edited July 14, 2011 by Monadnoc

[Kizza]

I use a utility similar to this one:

http://gotoes.org/sales/ShowHiddenFilesMacOSX/How_To_Show_Hidden_Files.php

[Bob Holtzmann]

I too have my autosave set to every five minutes. And I usually hit "Command-S" 4 or 5 times in between that time. But in this case, autosaving and saving does you no good. Everything is being autosaved/saved to invisible files. It's like you stepped into the Twilight Zone and all existence of any work you did the day before has disappeared into the Ether. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often. In fact, I'd say it was extremely rare. But next time, at least I'll know to look for invisible files.

Monadnoc

If that's the case, then your system directory needs repair. Start from your OSX install disc or a repair disc you made, and run Disk Utility or Disk Warrior.

[Christiaan]

Bob, it's not to do with the system directory needing repair. Monadnoc was referring to the situation I described in my first post. All the points about autosave etc. are good points but we already had them implemented.

The problem I describe is one where the user somehow gets themselves into a situation where they're working on the temporary save file (which is invisible). I never worked out quite how my Director managed it but I suspect a dialogue window popped up saying the file couldn't be saved, and then perhaps he dismissed it and kept working. Something in that ballpark anyway.

[Christiaan]

Here's another utility for showing invisible files:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/22318/show-hide-invisible-files

[Chris D]

... I backed up every 5 minutes and kept 12 copies

That's some serious backup!

Interesting about the .filenames as similar problems have happened with our users in the past and I just thought they were being stupid.

[Cthulhu]

I've had this happen four or five times now over the past month. Can't find any evidence of hidden files while / when this happens - I have them visible since reading this post.

I've reported the problem to Nemetschek and got no response, keep trying the technical help number that I've been given but to no avail.

Seriously unhappy about this - it's never been a problem until recently but I've had this happen too many times now. On one instance was about to issue a drawing to site for construction when I noticed that the last set of revisions I'd made had vanished.

Thinking about reinstalling, any suggestions would be gratefully received. Not sure how to keep my workspace preferences if I do reinstall.

using 2010, Sp4 on mac pro 10.6.7

[Pat Stanford]

Certainly not a good situation.

Where are the autosave copies supposed to be saved? How many copies do you keep? Do you save to the same file or to a separate backup file?

It sounds to me more like a file system problem than a Vectorworks problem, but reinstalling Vectorworks won't hurt even if it does not help.

`

[Cthulhu]

I keep 2, previously just one, saved into the same directory as a separate backup file as standard settings.

About the workspace - can this just be added back?

[Pat Stanford]

Are the files on a server or on the local computer?

Try making a separate single folder for all of your backups. Put it at the root level of your local disk or in your documents folder on the local disk.

What is your autosave trigger? Time or number of operations?

Check to make sure the backup files are being saved in the new backup folder before you do to much more work.