I don’t want to save every time I pause for a second. Nor do I want having to remind myself of pausing regularly to trigger higher save settings. Why can’t I just autosave the old-fashioned way:
“Autosave every xx minutes/seconds.”
I am easy to convince of new ideas if I see their benefit. What is the advantage over the old method?
For me, the advantage over the old method is more frequent saves so my work has less chance of being lost than having to wait a specific amount of time between autosaves.
There is still the option to manually hit save every time you feel it’s necessary if you don’t prefer the autosave method as is.
But this is not true: Using your example of 2 seconds:
old method: Autosave every 2 seconds
Scrivener: Save if inactive for 2 seconds
Unless you force yourself to pause for 2 seconds every 2 seconds you will end up with fewer saves, not more 
Yes, but you wouldn’t set it to autosave every 2 seconds would you? You’d be taxing the processor constantly and waiting for little slow-downs mid sentance.
Basically, the Scriv option says,
Only bother to save if:
With a 2 second save selected you will are pretty unlikely to either notice the saving happen or to lose anything more than a sentance or two.
For example, I’m guessing you didn’t actually notice the save process until you read about it in the manual?
Of course not. Spitfender suggested it, I just used his example. I prefer much higher settings which is why I asked this qestion. If I have to take a break to wait for autosave to kick in, I rather hit Ctrl S myself. Not exactly my idea of autosave. I dropped the Ctrl S nuisance a long time ago thanks to an invention called Autosave.
Wrong. I was wondering if the accumulation of temp files could have anything to do with it. That’s why I went into the dialog and tried to make sense of it.
Like pigfender says, the save process goes largely unnnoticed and that’s where I prefer it instead of having to worry about if I had saved frequently enough after something catastrophic happened. There are plenty of times when I pause just long enough for Scrivener to save then continue on without even noticing it has.
The 2 second autosave is the default in Scrivener as far as I recall.
Same with traditional autosave. Still waiting for one advantage of the new method. We’re talking in circles here.
The setting of 2 seconds keeps my laptop fan blowing. Loud and noisy. I don’t want this frequent saving. I want an occasional autosave every 10 minutes or so (provided something has changed, of course). This has always worked great for me.
If this is not possible, how do I switch off Autosave?
Personally, I work on some pretty large files. A regular autosave on a lot of programmes really slows my machine down and wastes time. The Scriv method I really don’t notice. Even on super huge files. Even when going full stream-of-consciousness style.
Sorry to hear you’re having problems though. I’m surprised you are typing fast enough (ie without pauses) that you saves are including enough data to cause a spike that would require the fan to kick in. Assuming there is nothing else running on your machine to cause this heavy use, perhaps it might even be worth shortening the autosave time DOWN to only 1 second. That should mean that if you really are typing the quickly and continually that the program has more chance to save littel chunks often rather than having to play catch up when you do eventually come up for air.
I don’t think it’s possible to turn the autosave feature off, I’m afraid. I’m guessing it cuts down on the “I never saved my work but somehow it’s your fault my work has gone missing” type technical support queries that the tema has to deal with.
But that would not happen in Scrivener, since the saving process were the same. Even the frequency would stay roughly the same, if you chose an interval that matches your needs. My other programmes behave nicely. Even the autosave of a very demanding music software stays within the required latency to not disturb live recordings.
I do not. I don’t think anyone could type so fast as to cause data spikes. The memory of text is ridiculously low compared to movies or music. I blame frequency, because 10 minutes is a critical threshold with my other applications. Lower than that, and the fan kicks in. I wish I could try higher settings in Scrivener, but it won’t let me enter more than 5 minutes.
Maybe it really has to do with the temp folder problem in Scrivener, it would explain it. Which is why I tried to increase autosave settings or turn it off.
Just a thought: is it possible that you are using one large file instead of several small files for your writing? The more traditional scriv use of many small files makes saving a trivial CPU/IO comparison issue. If you use large files you will see slow downs as compares and IO must block to flush.
Alternatively you could be looking at an issue where there are images embedded in the file you are editing and their relative position (at pos x now at posx+y) are requiring CPU and IO blocking. Solution: use separate file for those items and smaller text chunks.
I am not sure the large tmp file issue is a red herring or not. Try quitting scriv, cleaning temp, then starting over. If you see improvements then you have a possible code issue to report. If performance is the same I would suggest a simple evaluation of how you are utilizing the software for potential file/workflow optimization.
Just a thought.
Thanks Jaysen,
no images in my project, just 30 small documents, around 10,000 words in total, for testing purposes only. To rule out misunderstandings: I do NOT experience slowdowns. It’s the noise that’s unnerving me.
I think it’s the frequency of autosaves in combination with my notebook. When I decrease the autosave value in other software from my present 10-15 minutes down to 1 minute, the noises also pick up.
I would suggest your best compromise of the moment is to set autosave to 300 seconds, the highest value the dialog accepts currently, and use CTRL-S instead.
javran,
yes, I agree, and that’s what I’ve been doing, except that I keep forgetting to Ctrl S. Not used to saving manually anymore after a decade of not doing it.
In my mind I still assume the 300 seconds are counting upwards from when I first hit a key.
It’s very hard to think the other way round: That the seconds are constantly reset while I type and that saving won’t occur unless I wait 5 minutes or hit Ctrl S myself.
If you set the Scriv save to 300 seconds do the noises drop off? If they don’t then it looks like they have nothing to do with the saving, and are down to something else.
Might as well rule it out…
Replace your hard drive or system fan controller. Either you have a disk that is on its way out and you are getting lucky, the disk is over heating terribly (point previous but causal), or your fan controller is not properly stepping fan speed to dissipate heat. I have $$ on the drive.
We can test this pretty easy if you have a thumb drive. Move the scriv project there and set the auto save low. Still have noise then you are looking at fan.
Hmm… you’re windows so maybe Lee is using more disk IO than mac does but the test should still be valid.
That’s why I put up post #1: I realized that with higher settings Scrivener wouldn’t autosave, unless I waited 5 minutes. It dawned on me that I had misread (in)activity. It seemed like a typo, or not related to autosave at all, but rather to its section header --Saving-- Maybe Scriv had to wait after Ctrl S, until background tasks gave it 2 seconds of inactivity. But that seemed too weird.
The old “Autosave changes after xx minutes” was a no-brainer. You knew it would save in xx minutes when you changed s.th. No guesswork, no flickering LEDs of overly busy hard drives etc.
It could well be my notebook. Maybe I should get a Panasonic Toughbook again. It had no fan at all, and the hard drive was cushioned in silicone. That thing was not quiet, is was noise-less, totally silent. And I could type on sandy beaches, in the rain, on bumpy bus rides. But the price …
Will try out your suggestions next week. Have to meet a deadline and will be out over the weekend.
Thanks for now
Couldn’t wait to try it out: New project from stick. Autosave real low, as you recommended. The noise is still there. However, the file time on the stick is not updating until I close down Scrivener. Is it buffering autosave-data somewhere else? How does it work, anyway? Incremental saving of current doc? Overwriting all files? Just the current rtf?
In my experience, I’ve only see Scrivener autosave the individual files that I’ve changed, which varies depending on what I’m doing: change the title of a document, and the binder’s xml file changes. Just add words to the document, and that rtf is what is changed. Same with the Notes or synopsis text; only those files are saved. As I understand it, when you close or open a scrivener project, one or more files do get saved or deleted, but I’m not sure which ones.
When you say the file access time doesn’t change, are you talking about the Project.scrivx file, or are you monitoring & refreshing the view of the docs/ directory?
the individual docs; to make sure my file manager updates, I also change other files (with a plain text editor), the timestamps of these files are updated immediately.
wait. you’re windows. writes to thumb (those cheap ssd drives) are buffered to disk then background written to device. Effectively making no difference to you. if you had a real external drive you could try that.
what kind of sound are you getting? is it just fan noise or is it grinding (metal screeching)?