Backups not backing up

[jgould]

Greetings,

After getting tired of sugarsync completely screwing up my projects, I have switched to using the backups that the program creates and working off of local copies.

However, I have discovered that the copy of Scrivener that is installed on my MacBook Air is not creating backup copies of the project files. This poses a problem in my new method of working...

I have also discovered that this issue is not limited to the MacBook Air. Both my iMac and MacBook Pro are exhibiting the same behavior...

I'm running Scrivener 2.4.1 (Direct Sale Version) on OS 10.8.4.

Any suggestions?

Josh

[AmberV]

What steps have you tried so far to get backups working? Have you reset your preferences using the "Defaults" button in Preferences, and then monitored the default backup folder with Finder? You might want to save your preferences to a file first using the "Manage..." button. If you get it working that way though, you can compare what you have with the defaults and see if anything looks amiss.

[jgould]

Well, On the MacBook Air, I dumped the prefs off to the desktop and restarted the program. The only things I changed was to not reopen projects on launch, and to make backups on manual saves and adding time stamps as well. Only other thing changed from the defaults was the location of the file backups. (From ~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/Backups to ~/Documents/Writing/Backups)

Other than that, none of the default settings have changed in the prefs.

Now, I'll admit that in my head, simply opening and then closing the projects should generate backups. But I might need to add to them? Could this be why it doesn't seem to be working like it should?

[AmberV]

In the `File/Back Up/` sub-menu, is the "Exclude from Automatic Backups" option checked off?

[jgould]

not on the project that I have open on my iMac...

[AmberV]

What happens if you disable zip compression in the backup prefs? Sometimes the zip library can get jammed up at the OS level. You’ll probably still want to have that option on if you are syncing these, so I wouldn’t consider that a workaround, but a diagnostic step. It is usually just a matter of clearing out system caches with a tool like Onyx, and doing a reboot. You might try doing that anyway since weirdness is going on. It would be unlikely that two computers were similarly effected by a zip library bug at once, but you never know.

I would also leave the Console open while trying to trigger a backup. Perhaps Scrivener or the OS will report something that helps.

If you can think of any software you’ve installed recently that could perhaps conflict.

Now, I’ll admit that in my head, simply opening and then closing the projects should generate backups.

No, that should be enough. Just opening a project changes it in small ways.

[jgould]

I don't know what I did, but it has started working...

Now I have a different problem: I checked the box to append the date and time to the backups because I thought it would be easier, but I find it annoying and want it to go away.... I can't seem to do that...

Now what should I do? (I've unchecked the boxes, manually renamed the files, changed the metadata of the files, but the blasted time keeps appearing in the file names....)

Josh

[AmberV]

It will only change future backup files, not existing files in the backup folder (that wouldn't be a safe assumption for us to make). So you should start seeing the simple serialised names appear and eventually push all of the datestamped ones aside if you have rolling backups enabled (they are by default, limited to five). Although, if you've been manually renaming your backups Scrivener might not recognise they are connected with that project and they will just sit there outside of the normal set of rotating backups. I'm not sure what you mean about changing the meta-data of the files, but that probably will have no impact on Scrivener.