I thought I had lost all my work...

[Soquili]

Hi Nance,

You use the .bak file by renaming it to a .xar or .web file depending on if it is an Xtreme or Web Designer file.

Actually since a .web is a .xar file with a different extension you could name them all .xar or .web according to your preference.

[jvila]

wow, I combined xarareg with autohotkey and it saves drawing every 8 minutes.

[pauland]

Get into a regular backup system. I use a very simple system based on multiple redundancy.

Besides my regular computer I have a network connected external drive - if I had a desktop I might use a USB connected drive instead (if you ever buy an external drive make sure it has a fan to keep cool).

On this external drive I have a directory - backups.
I keep my work in separate project directories. - project1, project2, etc.

If I am going to work on project1 on a given day, I will create a directory on my backup drive - backups/090515 - named after the day. Then I copy my project1 directory to it.
so now I have backups/090515/project1

Then I can work on project1. If I reach an important point I want to keep, I create backups/090515lunchtime/project1.

I don't save individual files, always the complete directories. If I have a disaster I just walk backwards through the backup directory to find the last project save.

Is it wastefull of disk space? sure. When a project reaches a particular milestone I may copy it as project_milestone_name into a milestones driectory on the backup dirive.

Periodically I cull backups for milestoned projects and completed projects.

It works very well. My external drive is 500GB. I would still not be happy with this since I still would have a single point of failure for my saved backups, so I periodically copy over my 500GB drive backups to a second 500GB drive whose sole purpose is to act as a reserve in case the first backup goes belly up.

It sounds a bit extravagant, but you can buy my setup in the UK for £200, so it's probably about US$200. Not that expensive for peace of mind. If you use external USB drives or internal drives instead you can significantly reduce the cost.

One good thing about external drives is that you can turn them off, thereby reducing the chances of a virus or other misadventrue romping through the filesystem.

At some stage hard drives will fail. We're all guilty of complacency and will rue the day when a drive goes down.

Just a suggestion - there are loads of other ways to do a backup (some might suggest RAID) but this is how I do it.

The most important message is don't rely on having one copy of a file and don't keep your file copies on the same drive as the original.

Paul

[a friend rang me on a Saturday morning - his computer was getting slower and slower. By the time I went over a virus had trashed his filesystem, replacing file contents with rubbish, one file at a time - hence the need to make backups inaccessible]

[jvila]

Paul,
I agree in a part of your point of view.
In my work I developed several back up schemes based on different solutions, raid, virtual machines, external back ups, clusters high availaility, etc.
But before elaborate a back up strategy the first thing you have to define is what is the maximun you are willing to loose.
It is not the same if you can't loose an hour of your work than if you define you can loose a week.
After you define the needs you can tackle a back up strategy.
Ok, returning to xara, when you are working in a drawing if you can make an automatic backup and every back up is a new file I think it is a very good strategy, also every day you can make your external back up to save your work for machine's failures.
I think professionals who use xara can't admit to loose current drawing that took several hours.
The problem We want to resolve is "not loose a drawing We are making for several hours and suddently XARA ERROR:::::", We all know that it happends most often.
Ok, As I said, with xara reg + autohotkey(saving every 10 minutes) + every day's external backups, problem solved, the worst situation is 1 day and the less is 10 minutes.
I really like this topic.
Un abrazo

[jeffb]

just rename it as xar file amd away you go, but just in case make a copy first

[kinetica]

I ghost my hard drive every night, but that is of little use if you are working on a newly-created file that didn't exist yesterday. You need a backup strategy for both scenarios, I think. That's where XaReg has become a lifesaver for me. I have given the .BAK extension a unique file association with its own icon so that, when I am ready, I can easily delete them. But until I am finished with a document I tend to keep them all. That's a lot of BAK files, but disk space is cheap these days, so it's not the issue it was a few years ago.

[Burpee]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....I downloaded XaReg ages ago. Do you think I would install it and use it? No, not me. Never got around to it. Guess what? Yep, you're right. I lost a very important file today. I could just scream.

I saved and saved and saved, but only as one file. I had a whole page of intricate flourishes, leaves and such and grouped and then beveled. Personally, I don't think that should freeze up my file and then destroy it. I'm miffed about this. I have stayed away from using the live effects because they have crashed my work and now I have to worry about too many bevels. Should I use XX only to make simple circles and squares?

Yes, I'm being harsh but I'm just not computer saavy and I think XX should have automatic backup and I shouldn't have to download and install a separate ap to do it (by the way, thank you to whomever (Bill?) created XaReg and I will install it...late, al beit).

[steve.ledger]

Nancy, it was Bill who created XaReg correct.
Also please note that XaReg does not need installing, it's a stand-alone portable app which can be run from any folder or even a USB flash drive.

It's a common misunderstanding that XaReg creates backups - IT DOES NOT!

What XaReg does is access Xara registry settings and allows you to make changes in a safer way than editing the Windows Registry directly.
In other words XaReg does nothing which isn't already there from Xara.

Xara do have built-in backup for Xtreme, it's just not yet available in the program options at this stage due to various reasons, we may see this implemented in a future version, but for now it's there but must be enabled by the computer operator manually our using a utility like XaReg.

Sorry you lost your file - as a suggestion, you could 'Save As' once in a while and create a second copy?

[Burpee]

I woke up this morning dreaming about XaraX and my newly created files and my lost file (I do this when I'm playing games or reading a book too). I ran through what happened before I lost my fiile and decided I was very unfair to XaraX. I was not in a very nice mood last night when I posted my complaint and I was 'a bit' testy.

XX gave me chances to save my work and the bevels did not crash immediately. It just slowed my computer down so bad that it seemed crashed and if you click too many buttons while it's thinking, THEN it crashes.

Event history: Created design, replicated a page full of them, grouped them, applied chiselled bevel, Xara applied 'outside' bevel (Jepardy song here) and waited, I clicked inside bevel (Jepardy song here too) and waited, looks good now but wrong size bevel (4 px), I click slider (I should have typed in what I wanted), I wait forever and it finally comes up .5 px (wrong size), BUT I had accidentally pulled the slider back just a hair the first time (because the system was moving so slow and I was trying to be exact where I put the slider) so XX starts to recalculate all over again but I've already clicked to save the file, XX registers 2.8 px bevel and thinks and thinks......(10 Jepardy songs here) then Windows says the program is not responding, I walk away, I come back, not good, I have to get out, file registers 0 bytes, no way to save it.

I do usually 'save as' but I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I just plain forgot to do it. Saturday nights are like that because I usually have a libation or two.

Steve thanks for the XaReg explanation.

[InfoCentral]

I ghost my hard drive every night, but that is of little use if you are working on a newly-created file that didn't exist yesterday.

I have had horrible luck with using cds for back-ups. They seem very unreliable. I did a little investigation after loosing a library of material and programs and found out that not all cds and dvds are created equal. There are actually archival grades in these and Sony got the best mark for quality. If you own a dvd drive with all the formats then dvd ram is tooted as being a long term format. Much longer that the other standard dvd formats.