Hi, Bub - I'm currently at a disadvantage in replying - apparently Firefox 6 screwed up some things. All I know is that I can't quote from messages anymore when I'm replying here on the Forum. The basic thing for me is that I'm not against Auto Save - it's just that the routine I've had for years now works perfectly well for me. CTRL+S is so an automatic, built-in response for me, I know I sometimes do it many times during the course of a minute. I certainly do it after every small chunk of editing. And when I know I've made enough changes to warrant a new save, Save As is easy to do. I like having control over my saves - that's all. It's a sense of control thing when it gets down to it. And in my project folder, I have a neat little list of versions - usually a fairly short list, and they all share the audio folder, it's so simple to go back to a previous edit if I want, delete the extra versions if I want - Basically the same thing I could do with auto saves (though I'd have a lot more to weed out with that method)- but IIIII did it, not some robot telling me when I should do it. Auto Save - the first thing I turn off in any software I use, not just Sonar. RB

Autosave's purpose is to prevent data loss when the machine stops responding, app hangs, electricity loss, hardware failure, cat on the keyboard, spouse requiring attention,...

Yea sure, doesn't happen often.  That's also good reason to not purchase insurance.

I enable the autosave function on all programs I use, and my client's use.

The main problem with Sonar is, my observation, the autosave does not happen when the transport is transporting.

There are times when I will loop a long section and add a bunch of tracks. This can be many, many minutes.   During these happy moments I do not want to be tending to the app. But Sonar requires this attention. 

Yea, most of the data will have been written to disk. But having to import and align a bunch of clips after the saddness of a blue screen is annoying at best. 

Word, excel,... do it without interrupting my rolling along.

j

hehe---The debate/conversation continues. All I know is I haven't lost work in Years - capital Years, and I am my own captain at saving my projects. I usually just CTRL+S, do Save As when I've done a major change - no need to have my folder fill up with a million Save As versions, since after years, I've never lost anything. As wrapped up as I might get while playing back a project, it is simple pie to stop for a second, spend a split second to do a manual CTL+S, and then continue - it's all done within the space of a measure. No messy re-construction to do as was described in post #34. Folks- the point is there is no Right Way to save our projects. Use Auto Save if that floats your boat, do it yourself if that does. As long as you do Something to save your work and never lose your sessions. RB

Bub

rbowser

... more than a few of us have made the choice to save manually because we Do understand Autosave, and we prefer to do the saving ourselves.

Hi Randy,

I don't understand why some people have an aversion to Auto Save and I'd like to understand better in case there's a better way for me to use it or not use it. :)

The way I always understood Auto Save is, it is a separate file that has nothing to do with the .cwp file or it's associated audio files and if you don't manually save, all the changes you made to your Project.cwp file are lost.

If you record a new track and it Auto Saves, but you don't save your Project.cwp file, you will lose the changes in the Project.cwp file, but the Audio data will still be there for the AutoSave.cwp. So in that regard there is the potential to have a larger than necessary Audio folder when all is said and done but that's really the only draw back I see to it.

It appears that some people are very dead set against it but I sincerely don't understand why?

Bub

For once we seem to agree on something Bub.

Not that I think for one minute that everyone should use autosave. I guess I'm just pedantic when it comes to factual things so if someone says "I don't use autosave 'cos I don't want to / don't like it / don't trust it" or whatever that's fine. Each to their own. It's the factually incorrect statements that I question.

@randy - I wasn't referring to you specifically, rather just general incorrect comments I see on here all the time about autosave. When people make comments like "I don't want multiple copies of files on my system / it overwriting my files / to be in control of when I save / saving when I'm playing back or recording, etc" I just assume they don't understand how it works. The version of autosave I have is fully controlled by me as to when it saves, I can still Ctrl-S when I want, doesn't overwrite anything other than it's own file, only creates one file which even on huge projects amounts to no more than a few thousand kb, and most certainly doesn't save while recording or playing back, or on my under powered system stutter or stop playback. It just does it's thing without me knowing it's there.

Can't say I've needed it lately but it's nice to know it's there if I do ever get a project corrupts.

Who uses Auto save with SONAR?

Not me but my friend does...

.

I am nearing 59 years and just broke a bone. My first. (Third time down the ladder the soil was soft enough to give-way, and shatter my heal-bone.)

I have not had a car crash for nearly 35 years.

Should I stop being safe?  Stop buying insurance?

If the versioning feature functioned correctly, all of our concerns would be answered. Versioning is a form of SAVE-AS. If it could be set as the AUTO-SAVE function can, multiple copies of the project would be saved without having to SAVE or SAVE-AS. Data loss, and changes loss,  and attention to this function, would be reduced significantly for all and every.

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This would be most useful with the ability to EXPORT/IMPORT portions of a project.

Example: I have a project that is now in three versions with respect to the percussion. I would like to import some of the midi tracks from the first 2 versions into the 3rd. If I could export/import a trackfolder with the 10+ tracks, with all data, I would be very happy.

If I would have only saved during recording I would have lost the changes and the potential to be as annoyed as I am about the lack of a project export/import feature.

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Both SAVE and AUTO-SAVE are destructive. Both erase the current file.

Having a bunch of relatively small files in a project folder should be the least of concerns.

Word,... erase the auto-save data when the file is closed.  I do not want Sonar to do this.

J

manually, after edits.

+1 for auto save... no experience of glitches with it and was surprised to read that it happens for people. With the 'save' button on the 700R, it's now pretty easy to also do an extra save any time on top of the auto save which I have set to 5 changes as you (me) can sometimes get pretty focused with a player when they are doing multiple takes, and having a temp setup right now, the UPS isn't up and running yet! One power outage without the UPS is enough to make you consider all forms of insurance I reckon. Auto save certainly 'saved' the day that time with 4 customers in the room starting blankly as the lights went out. Cheers all. This thread has been a useful read.

Like so many others, I do Ctrl-S often and "Save As" for major changes. These are the "real" saves and are always the most current. (If an Auto-saved file is more current, I know it's just a safety.) 
 
HOWEVER, I also have Auto-Save enabled because it gives me the "right to be careless and sloppy." I try to work really fast in the studio because I believe inspiration is fleeting (check out my blog post re: songwriting with Sonar). So if I nuke something by accident or whatever, I always have a fallback. Auto-save has saved me enough times that I keep it enabled. When a project is complete, I "Save As" the entire project and delete the original...although I sometimes copy over some previously-saved files just in case.
 
Enabling auto-save does not impact the manual saving process at all. It's a supplement, not a substitute.
 
 

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Auto-Save-No! Manually Save-Every major edit point!

I like to 'save as' each project with a different number on the end e.g. 'myproject000', first edit 'myproject001', tenth edit 'myproject010'.

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mike_mccue
+ Big fan of "Save As"

Classic. OP starts out 3 years ago wondering if anyone uses it.
 
Comes back three years later to extol it's virtues.