HELP!! Hours of work lost?????????
I worked many hard hours today on a very important project with a deadline this week. Now it's GONE. I think I might have figured out what happened. I am wondering.... is there any way to recover it? I think I somehow had an extremely early version of the patch open. Then, not knowing the window was open, I re-opened the patch. There must have been two windows open with the same patch name. As I was saving all my work, I must have hit save on the OLD window. Now I can't find my work anywhere!!! Is there any way at all to recover this? (I assume this is what happened, as my patch is now just the very few first early steps I made). VERY FRUSTRATING
Is this a bug in Max 8? I would think that if I would open a project, that the project window would just come to the front of the screen if it was already open. But it opens a new window which can rewrite over the older project. I had a bunch of windows open (help windows, etc), so I must not have seen my old project window open still.
I would search your computer to make sure you don't have more than that one copy of the same named file on the computer. Right now, you should have two copies with the same name, since you must have saved over your current version. It is possible you're somehow just opening the old one, and that the more recent one is still saved somewhere but not being referenced.
Unfortunately it has always been possible to do this. I often forget I have a bpatcher open, open it a second time, edit and save it, then foolishly agree to "save" the first version at some point when I go to close that window, losing my recent edit. So, it isn't new behavior.
thats is intended that you can open the same document twice to make different versions - how you save patches again is under your control only.
Appears to be 100% gone........ this is certainly a "prone to disaster feature". Even a simple program like Mac Text Edit doesn't allow you to do this, and instead offers the option to "duplicate" the file. I have never ever had this happen with any other program in many years of working on computers......
This isn't going to help your current situation, but I name all my files with a prefix for the specific project. Even if I reuse certain elements, like a midi patch or something, I will make a new copy and rename it with the new prefix. "ProjectA.midi" becomes "ProjectB.midi" for the new project. Because I often make little tweaks/improvements to commonly used patches, this helps if I want to go back to an old project and still have it work. Without doing that, I was "improving" patches to where old projects wouldn't work because of some change I'd made.
It would be nice if it did give you some sort of "you currently have the same patch open, do you want to save this version over the file" or something to that effect.
I do think in your specific example that if you opened your new file from one location and were working on it and saving it regularly, then opened the old file from a different location, then saved over the new one--that I'm pretty sure it wouldn't do that without a dialog. So, I think you'd have to "save as" to get it to copy over a your new file with the old one. Which would be easy to do, because it would default to the directory of the new file, and the two files would have the same name.
I've done this before. It's incredibly frustrating.
Thanks for the info/suggestions. As I am digesting this "tragedy"..... I see now how I can rebuild what I have done better than before.... so I suppose "everything happens for a reason". But good to know this is how things work, and why such a thing might be useful. I just have to be more careful in the future. I am continually amazed what an incredible program Max is, and what it allows me to do in so little time. If doing this by writing code, it would take me much much much longer! I forgive you, Max :)
That's a very positive attitude, and I have had similar outcomes where maybe my code "improved." Frustrating nonetheless, and the only reason I made so many suggestions was because I have lost some important hours to unfortunate saves.
in fact there are several methods how programs open files. some dont allow to open the same document twice, others do, some only in certain situations (for example only until the open document has been edited).
back in MacOS 7 layout apps such as pagemaker or quark express had a "formular option", where you created files which could no longer be overwritten but still let you open a copy. (you can do something similar by locking a file on OS level.)
then, of course there are programs which simply do not let you the same or another file with the name twice. those had typically an autosave feature among the reasons for this method. (cubase? strategy games?)
when i open a max patch which i dont want to change the source but want to patch in it to try something, first thing i do is saving it under a different name in a location of my choice. (like leo explained it for projects - in programming enviroments you are usually not allowed to use the same name twice in the search path anyway)
the second thing you might want to install in your workflow is that you are going to save - and make an additional safety copy - as soon as the work you just did would be a loss when it is lost. (that can mean every minute - or once peer week.)
Obvious, but I also have a full backup of my Max project directory that is totally out of the loop of my editing/project computer. The Projects/files aren't very big so I just copy the whole thing every couple of months. I've actually pulled stuff from a long time back because I somehow messed it up down the line.
What I've done in the past that seems like a Cycling oversight is have two files open
myHelper
myMainPatch (something that uses myHelper)
I double click myHelper in myMainPatch, change something and save. OK so far so good. The problem arises when I go to close everything and the old myHelper is still open on my desktop and I rapidly hit save. Then the unedited myHelper gets saved over the edited one.
UGGG!
@raja I know this sounds infantile when git hub is around but I have a lot of projects where I save as MyPatch_V0004.maxpat
not infantile at all. manual control & local storage is the best thing you can do.
very common problem - I was warning my students about it only last week.
Feature request: couldn't Max warn when either saving a patcher where multiple copies are open or warning when saving an a version with less recent edits (or both)
Thank you all for your suggestions. I would think that it would be a useful option in "preferences" at least to have some sort of warning about saving over a patcher with the same name. Seems indeed I'm not the only one this has happened to!
But this story has quite a "happy ending" actually. I just finished rebuilding my patch, far more elegant and efficient than before. I probably actually saved time in the long run because now the design is significantly better. Basically built the patch in reverse order! Knowing the end result, I was much better able to achieve it. I suppose this is much like "refactoring" when writing actual code. Now I am thinking it would be interesting to teardown and rebuild the other patches I have made/use. Feeling much happier now compared to the "terror" I felt last night when it disappeared!
I guess you wouldn't want throw up a dialog box every time the user hits save.
far more elegant and efficient than before
that is what usually happens when you need to recreate it, you almost know it by heart and it ends up beeing better.
pro check: did you this time make a backup? :)
Look into using version control. I have my entire Max 8 folder (minus packages) in a git repository. I commit my changes often and push to a remote. github and bitbucket are both free options.
+1 on version control and I often "belt-and-suspender" it with also using dropbox, Amazon S3, NAS backup, etc. (both onsite and offsite for mission critical stuff) -- my personal rule of thumb is if I'd be p1ssd on losing work since backup (not just save), its time to save/backup again
I try to save to a new file every ten minutes or so when working on a project like this: project1, project1a, project1b, project1c. Then when I get to a milestone project2, project2a etc. This way I can trouble shoot what is happening if there is a problem. Save mistakes with Max have cost me several hours in the past sometimes nothing can really be done to fix this. Now by the end of the project I have around 100 saves. It is interesting to review these saves taking time lapse look at how it came together. Also if there are major components that could be used in other projects I will save them with separate names in the project folder.
Sorry to hear you lost hours of work but you did it once you can do it again show that computer what's up for messing with you.
This is a little complicated, but here's what you would need to avoid some accidents:
a)The last modified save date/time of the patcher when it is first opened.
b) The last modified save date/time of the patcher when you want create a new save.
If the A does not equal B, then a warning like "The saved patch has been modified elsewhere, since you opened this instance, do you want to save over that version, or creat a new save?"
This would keep you from saving over a newer version if you start closing extra opened windows and accidentally close an extra copy of an older version.
All great suggestions, thank you everybody.