No ‘yanking of drive’ here. Simply - a user should be able to save and open form a network drive. My other various wp programs all achieve this with no difficulty - Scrivener does not. I should not have to be messing around getting Scrivener to work. My external drive is mounted correctly - all my other programs work with it - just not Scrivener. Sorry if this annoys - I can only speak as I find.
By the way, I have no virus software installed.
Thanks.
Mike
You missed my point, which was that Mountain Lion will, under some circumstances, disconnect network drives. I have personally experienced this. If you think having Scrivener fail to save is annoying, wait until it happens to your Quicken database.
Blasting Scrivener for something that could easily be due to a known Mountain Lion issue is somewhat unfair, as is expecting Scrivener to handle this kind of OS error gracefully.
Moreover, in your anger with Scrivener – however justified it might or might not be – you have declined to answer several direct questions that might actually lead to a diagnosis of the underlying problem.
Katherine
I have answered the questions asked. Ridiculous.
I provided instructions for downloading and installing the direct-download version and asked you to let me know if that made a difference, as I explained that this will let us know if the issue has anything to do with sandboxing in the MAS version. This is the main thing to try, but you made no mention of it. Have you done this yet? Please let me know the results. You also didn’t answer my question about plugins. We want to help, but we can’t get to the bottom of things unless you follow the steps we ask you to take and provide us with the information we request.
Yep - done what you asked - no difference. I use a number of wordprocessors and Writers Cafe - ALL work with no difficulties accessing drives. Not helpful to insist that it is the OS - clearly, if all these other programmes work - it is not.
That’s not necessarily true. The fact is that Scrivener does nothing special with the file system, and that it interacts with the file system only through OS X. I’m not trying to brush you off there; I’m just explaining the facts. I’m sorry you don’t find that “helpful”. Anyway, now that you have answered my other questions, we can rule out sandboxing as the issue. I think, from your description, it is probably just down to the fact that Scrivener’s file format is a file package, and Scrivener loads from and saves to that package lazily, unlike many programs, and so is more dependent on the file always being available, making it more susceptible to temporary dropped network connections if a file is stored on a network drive.
The thing is that when Scrivener goes to save, it just invokes a standard Cocoa (OS X framework) method. It’s then up to OS X to take that and save the data to the necessary location. If OS X can’t do that for some reason, the file system tells Scrivener that something has gone wrong, and Scrivener alerts the user. Scrivener saves more frequently than other programs (because of its custom autosave routines) and is therefore more prone to encountering dropped network connections than apps that store all of their document data in memory. A program that uses a “flat” file format such as Word or TextEdit or most programs, in fact, doesn’t have to rely on the network always being available since the entire document is stored in memory. But this isn’t how Scrivener works - Scrivener files can grow massive, containing all sorts of research, and so Scrivener only loads files into memory from the .scriv file package as and when it needs them, keeping everything fast. But this means that the .scriv file must always be available - if the network drops out temporarily, Scrivener won’t be able to work. As I say, in programs that have all files in memory, this won’t be as much of an issue. But certainly, from your description, the only explanation is that the file system is telling Scrivener that the file path at which the project is stored is not available when it goes to save.
For this reason, we generally don’t recommend working from projects on network drives.
Whether you choose to believe me or not, this isn’t something I can change without changing the entire way that Scrivener saves, and doing that would mean that we would have to remove all of Scrivener’s research features and use a flat file format. If Scrivener doesn’t meet your needs, Apple is generally very good about refunds if you give them a good reason, so if you explain to them that you need to run Scrivener files from a network drive but its file format isn’t ideal for that sort of usage, I’m sure they will give you your money back. Again, I’m not trying to fob you off - we’d hate to lose you, but you’re clearly not happy and I get the impression that my explanation isn’t going to be what you wanted to hear.
Wow - that is a major failing.
Just to clarify, are we talking about a network drive here - accessed via a network - or an external hard drive? You mention both, and the latter certainly should not be a problem.
A simple home network - a NAS attached to a router. For the last time this should not be a problem for any software to achieve. This is a common setup found in thousand of homes.
It is obvious to me, that Scrivener cannot cope, certainly via OS X. A pretty poor show giving the paying customer pretty vague excuses. If a piece of software is designed to work with an OS - it should be able to handle it’s file management system.
We are just going around the houses here. For whatever the reason - this is a major failing for this customer. A pity because Scrivener is a nice piece of software. There are competitors that do not have this obvious flaw.
I don’t have anymore time to give to this. I will have to choose a competitor that can work properly with OS X.
Thank you for your attention.
Hardly `vague excuses’ - I learned a lot from the very patient explanations.
Hardly a major failing: if it were there’d be a lot more grumpy noise about it.
Mike
There is a wealth of information online that details the Mountain Lion / NAS problems you, and others, are experiencing. For the record, my own NAS setup would seem to support Keith’s very detailed explanation. I have a 2TB NAS (Western Digital) drive that’s connected to a Billion Bipac 7800N broadband router. I’ve had a similar problem to the issue you’ve described, but with Adobe Photoshop files. My iMac and MacBook Pro both run Mountain Lion, and I’ve seen the problem on both machines. However, I also have an old PowerBook G4 running Scrivener 2.3.1 on OS 10.5 (Leopard), and that’s saving .scriv files to the network drive without any problems whatsoever.
Incidentally, your irascible and petulant responses to the developer’s attempts to assist say far more about you than they do about Scrivener. Just thought I’d mention it…
Indeed, I have some types of files that I cannot use over a network file server either. If you are feeding your input/output through a straw, in a program that is used to a bucket, you’re going to have problems. If a format doesn’t work well, then you adopt check-out/in procedures with your work group, or just remember to backup copies to the network when you’re done if it is yourself. You must understand that no computer professional would expect all Mac programs to operate with equal quality across a network file share. This is why many offices that deal in high disk usage formats have a policy about people not working off of the file server.
Thank you for your personal comments - you know nothing about me but you feel qualified to comment on me personally.
Over and out.
The only evidence you have given so far of the ‘real’ you is that of rudeness, irascibility and arrogance in response to genuine attempts to help you.
Was that not the impression you wished to give? Then change the way you write.
Over and out.
Mike
If I’ve offended you then I apologise; that was not my intention. I made the observation, albeit in a clumsy fashion, to draw your attention to the fact that requests for assistance are generally best received when not accompanied by a welter of negative comments and churlish responses. Scrivener is, and remains, a superb example of independently developed software. It’s the result of one man’s vision, a man who has devoted years of effort to build what is generally lauded as the best writer’s software available — on any platform. Scrivener is used by a host of commercially successful novelists: just take a look at the testimonials: and yet you feel at liberty to rail about “major failings”, “very disappointing”, “it’s obvious to me that Scrivener cannot cope”, and other disparaging comments. You responded to Katherine’s attempts to assist with a dismissive “Ridiculous.” Well, I’m sorry Mike, but I consider that to be just plain rude.
You state that I know nothing about you. That’s not entirely true. I know enough from reading your posts to be able to form a first impression and, in my world, first impressions count.
I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Roy
I apologise if this has already been covered here, but there are 18 pages to this topic and I don’t have the energy to read them all!
Just to make two suggestions:
The problems reported with memory sticks MAY be caused by never having reformatted them, from FAT16 or FAT32 to Mac OSX format? I’ve used scores of them, I always reformat, and never had a problem.
Someone reported a disaster with Dropbox, that someone else managed to empty their Dropbox folder and they lost everything? It happened to me once (my own fault!) but I discovered when panic mode was subsiding, that Dropbox archive everything you’ve had in the folder and keep it for 30 days, including individual files you have deliberately trashed. So, you don’t lose anything with Dropbox - just download from the archive anything you want : in my case that was everything (huge sigh of relief).
Well. I did it. I mangled my synched files by moving them to a cloud drive. Hey ho. At the time I did it I was rapidly running out of space on my SSD in my MacBook Air and it seemed like the most sensible solution. Dropbox was taking up an inordinate amount of valuable space on my SSD and then suddenly voila! Tons of space. Everything was fine for a time as I only use Scrivener on my Mac.
I am not a real writer, just lifelong dabbler. Since I learnt to write fifty years ago. Consequently I have at least six books on the go.
I noticed problems occurring whenever Scrivener got an update. Files that needed to be updated hit errors mostly saying that there was not enough space on the drive to complete the action. Everything is still there of course. I am sure I still have txt files I can open. It’s just the Scriv files that are messed up.
Eventually as Scrivener developed and got more and more complicated (for me) as features were added and the synch issue got worse, I jumped ship to Ulysses. I recreated my binder structure for my most finished book and saved files into it. It now works a treat but I miss the flexibility of Scrivener.
Now however the long awaited day has arrived and Scrivener IOS has arrived. Hurrah!
What do I do? Wait until I can afford to buy one of those plugin memory cards that expand my Airs memory and I can move Dropbox back onto an Internet drive? Or, do I buy Scrivener IOS and work solely from my IPad until I buy the plugin memory card?
At the end of the day will I have to delete my original Scriv files as they are now too messed up to fix? I am thinking I will need to start again. Create new binders and upload the text files into them. It won’t be a bind as I will be rediscovering stuff written years ago. I have a mind that likes that kind of task.
So to clarify, the questions are:
(A) - do I hold off until Dropbox is back on my SSD or
(B) - can I try and get some of the Scrivener experience back by just using it on my IPad or
© will doing so cause even more mess down the line? Or
(D) Buy the memory card, move Dropbox back and only then pick up Scrivener IOS and recreate my folder structure.
There you go. A nice simple problem!
I can’t give you a complete answer, but option “(B) - can I try and get some of the Scrivener experience back by just using it on my IPad” is certainly possible.
If you don’t mind manually transferring projects via iTunes, you can live without Dropbox on your Mac. 
You will need to have the latest [2.8] version of Scrivener on your MacBook in order to work with a project created on your iPad. I have no answer as to whether your older projects can be recovered; someone from the Official Tech Support Team would be better for that.
Thanks Silverdragon. I just watched an overview of Scrivener IOS on YouTube that gives me some hope of resurrecting my projects.
The latest dropbox app updates have a feature called “selective sync”, which lets you… wait for it… selectively sync just some of the folders that have been uploaded to the dropbox serve. If you keep your Scrivner files all under one folder (as is necessary with the iOS version), then only syncing that folder should prevent the rest of your dropbox data from filling up your internal drive.