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intelligent autosave


thomas dine

Question

Is there any way to adjust Autosave so that it saves, say, the last 3 saves AND one from 12 hours ago, & 24 hours ago, & 48 hours ago?

I have set 5 saved files, but sometimes find the mistake I made was more than 5 saves ago; perhaps in the morning when I have been working all day; and the autosaves don’t have what I need.

Another intelligent request; could autosave have some way of not interrupting an operation under way?  Like half-way through drawing a polygon!  Perhaps schedule the save for the first ‘idle’ time after the due time?

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Don't use Autosave. Have VW make a backup copy to a different folder and don't have it backup based on time. Better to run it based on the number of operations. That way it does not try to save in the middle of your action. 

 

I don't have an answer to the longer save times. When I am working on a real project, I tend to duplicate everything at the beginning of each day, so I always have a backup of my starting point. I can then go and clear those out as necessary. 

 

I also have all of my autosaved backups go to the same folder. I don't use that as an archive, but only as backups. Since I have manual copies, the backups are disposable. They are only there in case of a crash during the day and can be cleared out any time after.

 

And put your files on DropBox or iCloud, or some other sync service so you always have an off site backup (and usually multiple versions) as well.

 

And always remember that nothing is actually saved until you have at least three copies on two different types of media in at least two separate physical locations.

 

Your mileage may vary.

 

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Thank you Pat, good advice.  How many 'operations' do you set for backup?

Making a copy each morning is also a great idea; if only I was that sensible & disciplined! only myself to blame — onsite and offsite copies only help if I haven't overwritten the file automatically, as Time Machine and Dropbox do (I use both).

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@thomas dine Apple's Time Machine doesn't overwrite files, keeping hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily before then, etc, and saves as many past versions as your drive has room for, thinning out the older versions and keeping the newer ones, so you should be able to get previous versions  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209152

 

However, I do rely on the VW autosave feature, saving every 50 operations.  I use a "junk" external drive that only has VW backups, so that they don't clutter up my machine.  That way I don't really care how many versions are saved (though I'm set to 20).  You can set the location in VW Preferences->Autosave->Autosave a backup copy to -> A custom location

 

 

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I also have a "safe saves" folder where I manually save a copy every day, or before significant changes. Then I have autosaved backups running too, which generally cover the past few hours' work. And then I have Time Machine running too.

 

But really VW's backup autosave should work like the OP suggests: increasing time interval between backups as you go back in time. As it is, you have to rely entirely on manual processes to retrieve versions from longer ago, which is not ideal.

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