Is this a bad habit?

[broc croll]

I have the practice of making a duplicate copy of my previous day's drawing file, and then proceed to develop the drawing on the duplicate copy. I do this as a back up strategy. I notice that my current file is identified as an alias file in "get info" while my older files are identified as "drawing file." All this is to say that I have changed the nature of my file by making duplicate copies.

My questions: is this a bad habit? Am I gradually corrupting my file in some way where I may soon find myself in big trouble? Can I somehow fortify my current "alias" version of my drawing and re-birth it as a "drawing file."?

Any comments welcome, be it Vectorworks specific or general computer sense.

[MikeB]

It sounds like you are not creating a copy of your file. An alias is like a short cut to get to a file from another location on your computer. Open your origional file, and I'm willing to bet your changing it. You should be copying the file, the easiest way to do this is to save the file under a different name in VW.

But a better back up strategy would be to have a external storage devise that you copy all of your data to at the end of each day. There a several small external hard drives available now in the under $100 range.

good Luck

[broc croll]

You are right. I have been using Finder>File>Duplicate and apparently I am sometimes landing on Make Alias by mistake!

The 2nd hard drive is a good suggestion. Thanks for your reply.

[Kristen]

Also, if you ever use workgroup referencing, you'll find it works better to save a copy of the file as the backup and continue working in the original file. The reference file will continue looking for the original file, so it's easier if that one is the most up-to-date.

[Guest]

There are a number of backup options depending on the volume of files you are working with.

Tape Backup and CD backup are good bets. The hardware lasts for a good ammount of time and it's very unlikely files on a CD or tape will get corrupted.

If it's only you, it is probably cheaper to get a good CD burner that lets you rewrite to CDs. Simply save your VW files to a rewritable CD every day or every other day. The next time, rewrite the files to the CD again.

Copying files on the same hard drive or on another hard drive does not save you in the event a hard drive goes bad. Once it goes, so does most of the infomration on a hard drive.

You may want to seriously outweigh the benefits of a burner or tape deck over duplicating a file on the same or additional hard drive.

[D Wood]

Katie, I back up with Retrospect to RW CD's, but I'm finding the number of CD's is starting to mount, even with compression, and the idea of backing up to an external & portable drive is starting to look economic.

In addition, I archived a lot of projects to RW CD - when I tried to retrieve a file I found that I could open all files (Appleworks, etc) except VW files - I got this message

"-61 No Write Permission.

Attempt to open file - FS OPEN"

which to me is gobbledegook. I eventually opened the file by dragging on to the iMac hard drive, and it opened normally. Do you have any idea what the message means, and why the file wouldn't open directly?

Regards

David W

iMac 17", OS10.2.6, VW 10.5.0

[Guest]

You cannot open files on a CD directly in VW because of the CD permissions.

Files on CDs have a read only permission.

In order for you to open a file, the location the file exists needs to allow for a temp version of the file to be written. (The temp file is not moved to the hard drive like a few other word editing applications)

Since you can't write to CDs on the fly, you can't open a file directly from a CD.

[D Wood]

Katie

Thank you for that, and for your prompt reply - I was worried that I had lost those archived files there for a while.

Regards

DW

[dsolutions]

Hi.

I've had this question to ask and now seems like a good time. In VW9 you could open a file stored on a disk. VW would ask you if you want to open as under a different name and then default to "untitled". What was the reasoning behind the change. It can be a pain when you have an archived drawing on a disk.

1) Insert Disk

2) Copy it to your hard drive.

4) Open the file.

5) Delete the file.

ALL just to see what was in it.

Before...

1) Insert Disk

2) Open file (click "yes")

3) Close file without saving.

This is what every other program allows.

VW used to allow this option.

It seems as though we are having to do more steps to get the same results. I think it should be the other way around.

Remember if you are going thru 30 VW files to find the right one it IS a pain.

[MikeB]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Katie:

Copying files on the same hard drive or on another hard drive does not save you in the event a hard drive goes bad. Once it goes, so does most of the infomration on a hard drive.

You may want to seriously outweigh the benefits of a burner or tape deck over duplicating a file on the same or additional hard drive.

---

I solve this by using two backup hard drives. This way I have 3 copies on 3 seperate drives (the origional on my harddrive and 2 copies on two other seperate drives), the possibility of all three failing at one is pretty small.

Just my 2 cents

[Kevin]

It is a good idea to keep a backup copy off-site as well. Fire, flood, or theft can destroy your files no matter how many copies on site you have.