Lost the work from one day

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Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on August 27, 2015 at 6:06am

This could well be a Windows problem not a GH problem.

I've seen files in a folder on a server when viewing from one computer, but when I view from another computer the files are not there. Similarly with saving files... sometimes the old version is visible one one PC and the new version on another PC.

Perhaps contact your network admin and see if they can help.

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on August 27, 2015 at 10:29am

I feel your pain, been there done that. I never rely on the Autosave feature of any software I use. I save regularly throughout the day, at various stages. (Project1.xxx, Progject2.xxx. etc.) I save copies to a second HDD, .... never the boot HDD.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 27, 2015 at 11:45am

Windows caches operations to and from storage devices, so even though the software running thinks everything is a-ok, the actual data on discs may be well out of sync. This is particularly a problem with slow storage such as Flash or network drives (that's why you should always ask Windows about removing USB sticks, because it may be buffering changes). The problem is compounded with network drives as it's not just windows on the local machine, but also operating systems elsewhere that may choose to buffer write operations.

Grasshopper uses the following steps to try and ensure a file write never goes wrong, but there's almost nothing I can do to force IO buffers to flush:

1. The new file contents are created entirely in memory, so if there's a problem serializing the file it'll happen locally, not on disk.
2. Once the memory file is complete, it is written to a temp location on the local machine.
3. Once that file write succeeds, the original file (assuming there is one) is renamed, but left on the target storage.
4. Once the rename succeeds, the new file is moved from the temp folder to the target folder.
5. Once that succeeds the renamed old file is deleted.

I do not know how you could end up with an old file that has a new timestamp, though the most likely answer is that someone, somewhere also had the same file open and saved it without making any changes after you saved your version. But that's not necessarily the only explanation.

Permalink Reply by Ivan B on August 27, 2015 at 8:35pm

Thank you very much for all your efforts. Now I also think it must be a windows problem. It's impossible someone else worked on the file, I'm the only one working with grasshopper.

But on that day I was also making some CFD simulations with another software. Even though everything was fine after I closed Rhino, the next morning (I simulated also during night) the computer showed me a memory problem. I guess that was the issue.

Anyway, I rebuild my gh file and next time I'm trying to be more careful about saving and running too many things at the same time!

I very appreciate the support on this website from all of you and would like specially thank David for creating such an amazing tool :)