One weird trick to avoid losing your work :)

[Flex727]

I've seen far too many posts over the years from people who lost days or weeks of work because of a corrupted project file. It happens with the best of software and the most reliable computers. There is one simple trick you can do to minimize your loss - every so often (I do it at least every day), when you've made sufficient changes that reconstructing them would be painful, save your file with a new name (typically just change a rev number). You will now have multiple copies of your file and if the latest file goes bad, you have an available backup.

Further, as you should with every data file you have on your computer, back up to another location (or two!). I back up my data to a thumb drive every time I leave my computer and additionally back up my desktop data to my laptop (and vice-versa) when I use my laptop.

Now ask me if I've ever lost any critical data. The answer will not surprise you.

[John_R]

Same here Flex.....

I save to a new file name daily, appending the file name with the days date, such as;

1210 formax 03 20 19.vlp

If I do a lot of changes I will sometimes add an A, B, C after the date and have multiple saves in a day, plus I add the PLC model to the name also.

So far as storage, I work off a USB hard drive, and try to be diligent about copying my files to my C drive and a network drive.

And as in other recent discussions, I'll save my version number somewhere on a display;   v032019

[Flex727]

Ha! I didn't go into as much detail as you did, but that is exactly what I do. Every file name of mine ends in date plus dash number (today's would be 190320-1). And I always include both the VisiLogic version and filename in an obscure location on the HMI screen. Great minds think alike!

[Ausman]

I've mentioned a backup solution to this in the past without luck.  Worth trying again.  Years ago my "sidekick" backup routine was a program that came with Partition Magic, and it was called DataKeeper.  It was the best backup program I've ever worked with.  Sadly it refuses to play with later versions of Windows, including 7.  I've tried all sorts of compatiblity settings without luck.

The really great thing about the program was that it constantly monitored the system and anytime a save of any sort was made in the folders it had been instructed to watch, it did a backup to wherever you wanted.  And the truly useful bit was that you could specify how many versions of the file would be saved before the first in the FIFO lineup would be dropped.  20? 30? You name it.

In essence you could simply keep on using the same name for anything you were working on, and do a regular save every few minutes if you wanted.  If you stuffed something up, you had all these previous file copies there for the asking, up to the number of saves you had specified.

I've hunted for ages to find something similar without any luck.  They all need to be on some sort of schedule, or a manual initiation.  Datakeeper worked as a totally different concept, and did it exceptionally well.

If anyone knows a current program that works in exactly the same way, and does so on current Windoze versions, please advise.  My inability to continue to use the program resulted in my evolved method of naming conventions for program builds, that I've mentioned elsewhere.

cheers, Aus

[Isakovic]

Every time I got corrupted file, it was because I had to add new font because default fonts can't display č. I learned this lesson once, but still remind myself from time to time.

18 hours ago, Flex727 said:

Now ask me if I've ever lost any critical data.

Did you ever lose any critical data?

[Ausman]

3 hours ago, Isakovic said:

Did you ever lose any critical data?

U R so Funny, Isak!!

cheers, Aus

[Flex727]

5 hours ago, Isakovic said:

Did you ever lose any critical data?

The answer will not surprise you.

[John_R]

7 hours ago, Isakovic said:

Did you ever lose any critical data? 

In my case the answer is YES...... We probably ALL have at one time or another  

But that's the reason we're so anal about saving to multiple locations, lesson learned.

[Flex727]

53 minutes ago, JohnR said:

But that's the reason we're so anal about saving to multiple locations, lesson learned.

Yep, years ago in a different job I had a hard drive crash that resulted in many months of lost work. I vowed then that would never happen to me again.

[kratmel]

I have my own way of storing completed projects for a PLC - to send an archive with a file from my own mailbox to my other mailbox.

The file remains in the folder in the mail sent and in the mailbox.

The advantage of such a method is the availability of the two copy of project in an arbitrary place where there is an Internet connection.
A thumb drives has already become such a number that I'm starting to forget where I recorded something

[Joe Tauser]

New program version saved every day.

Cloud backup program that synchronizes almost instantaneously - I use "Syncplicity".  Then it copies everything to my secret remote development location, too.

Joe T.

[Ausman]

Call me wary and old-fashioned, but I hate anything to do with the Cloud.  So fraught with potential issues.  I acknowledge, however, that most of the world thinks it's the bees knees.

But I'll check it out tonight, anyway.

cheers, Aus

[John_R]

8 hours ago, Ausman said:

but I hate anything to do with the Cloud

+1 to that Aus, I cringe every time our IT guy moves something else to a cloud based app. we lost our internet connection last week (fiber cut somewhere), and the whole front office went idle cause no one could get to their work....

8 hours ago, Ausman said:

world thinks it's the bees knees.

geez  Aus, I haven't heard that term since they started making sliced bread🙃

[Flex727]

9 hours ago, Ausman said:

I hate anything to do with the Cloud

+1 from me as well. I don't hate it so much as I would never allow it to be my sole storage location. It's fine as a tertiary backup.

[Ausman]

12 hours ago, JohnR said:

the whole front office went idle cause no one could get to their work.... 

Yes, one of the very reasons.  To me that's a totally insane concept. 

Same as my comments elsewhere about IoT, I actually don't like the concept of something convenient for me actually being "master" controlled by someone else.  Yet the world in general continues to embrace such things, not seeming to be bothered by any of it at all.  Except when something happens to their link and the only real catastrophe is that the photo of the most recent egg for breakfast can't be posted to all their "friends".

There, John R, no mention of bees this time, but I did like the sliced bread bit....likely too obtuse for some.     🥪 !!

cheers,  Aus

[Ausman]

And I just thought of another weird trick to avoid losing your work.

Retire and don't do it anymore.    🤔 

cheers, Aus 

[John_R]

14 hours ago, Ausman said:

Retire and don't do it anymore.

Yep, been thinking about that lately, I've been making tounge-in-cheek comments about retiring for a couple of years, and the bosses say "yeah, yeah, sure you are, who'd take your place?"....

I got a new manager last fall, and first thing I said to him was, "well you know, I turn 62 next year, and I'm thinking about retiring".....   🏝️

Now I have a young protege that I'm supposed to teach "everything I know" (by osmosis I suppose because I still don't get a lot of one-on-one time with him), but he's a sharp young man and slowly picking up on things.

JohnR

[Ausman]

8 hours ago, JohnR said:

sharp young man and slowly picking up on things.

If he is actually listening then that is a big hurdle already reached.  So many youngies immediately go into "he's an older bloke and therefore knows absolutely nothing" mode when they first encounter anyone over 50.  They forget that everything they are using is primarily due to efforts, knowledge and innovation put in by those same "oldies". 

I have seen perfectly good machines/systems destroyed by totally inept youngies thinking they know best, who have somehow finangled their way into the hearts of bosses by using all the "buzz" words and other self-grandiosity, displacing people with proven track records at the coal face.   I should laugh, but it is often heart breaking.

🚫

cheers, Aus