Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Turning off auto-save

Jethryn Freyman

Jethryn Freyman

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 9, 2007
2,329
3
Australia
To anybody with DP4 experience, is there any way to turn off the autosave feature?

I'm not convinced I'm going to like it. I'll give it a go, but I'd like to know if there's currently a way to turn it off.

Also I hear that the "Save" command is gone. Is this true? What about "Save As"?
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
To anybody with DP4 experience, is there any way to turn off the autosave feature?

I'm not convinced I'm going to like it. I'll give it a go, but I'd like to know if there's currently a way to turn it off.

Also I hear that the "Save" command is gone. Is this true? What about "Save As"?
Click to expand...

Until the document is saved you can use Save. Once the document has been saved once, you can Save A Version, command-S
You can use the Duplicate command to replicate the old Save-As command. There is no way to turn this off. You can lock a document as it stands now or wait until programs implement the feature, perhaps they will have a preference to turn it off in their app.
 
I'm thinking the autosave & versions feature is going to be murder on SSD's with tons of writes.
 
Last edited:
mrapplegate said:
Until the document is saved you can use Save. Once the document has been saved once, you can Save A Version, command-S
Click to expand...
So I guess that is like the old "Save" function, only it doesn't just save the file, it saves a Version marker.

Looks like I'll just have to play around with Lion at the local Apple Store and see how I like it.
 
ScubaCinci said:
I'm thinking the autosave & versions feature is going to be murder on SSD's with tons of writes.
Click to expand...
It's lots of minimal writes though? I expect there'll be a setting somewhere, though possibly hidden, that will allow you to tweak how regularly auto-saves are performed if it becomes a real concern, you might even be able to disable automatic saves entirely, while still retaining the ability to manually save versions?

One of the main issues really I think will be opening a frequently edited file, as it'll accumulate a lot of changes that need to be applied to the base file before it opens.
 
haravikk said:
It's lots of minimal writes though? I expect there'll be a setting somewhere, though possibly hidden, that will allow you to tweak how regularly auto-saves are performed if it becomes a real concern, you might even be able to disable automatic saves entirely, while still retaining the ability to manually save versions?

One of the main issues really I think will be opening a frequently edited file, as it'll accumulate a lot of changes that need to be applied to the base file before it opens.
Click to expand...

Hence the need for both a SSD and a regular drive ;)
 
ScubaCinci said:
I'm thinking the autosave & versions feature is going to be murder on SSD's with tons of writes.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Imagine how an SSD on a Windows machine would get slammed doing Virus Scans, they tend to use a ton of disk space. Even under those conditions we had Windows NT Embedded machines with Virtual Memory Enabled running a full virus scan every morning and it took about a year and a half to blow out all the write cycles on a 512MB SSD. Auto Save/Versions will have minimal to no effect on your SSD.
 
Jagardn said:
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Imagine how an SSD on a Windows machine would get slammed doing Virus Scans, they tend to use a ton of disk space. Even under those conditions we had Windows NT Embedded machines with Virtual Memory Enabled running a full virus scan every morning and it took about a year and a half to blow out all the write cycles on a 512MB SSD. Auto Save/Versions will have minimal to no effect on your SSD.
Click to expand...

Not quite true. Remember that writes to a cell invalidate that cell for further writes until the entire cell is erased. So if a cell has say, 10 blocks for writes and you write a 3 block file, those 7 blocks are unavailable to the controller until the whole cell is re-initialized (zeroed). With a lot of "tiny" writes, the number of cells invalidated adds up very quickly, and you reach the provisioning wall rapidly.

Don't think it happens? I've had World of Warcraft on my 60 GB SSD less than a year and I've had to low level format it twice and recopy WoW to regain performance like when the SSD was new. Not only is that time consuming, but it eats up available write cycles faster than should be happening on a typical install. It's the large amount of tiny writes that did it. So six months for a 60 GB SSD for a single game that writes less files than the OS does daily.

Now imagine that as an OS boot SSD and then stick in the autosave "feature". Yeah, not so pretty now is it?
 
Save a version vs. save as issues

Can someone tell me how this works? I'm confused.

I'm writing a document in Pages and I usually save it each day, with a different date. If I save this today, as a version, where is yesterday's version so I can go back and find it?

Very confusing.
 
seattlemac said:
Can someone tell me how this works? I'm confused.

I'm writing a document in Pages and I usually save it each day, with a different date. If I save this today, as a version, where is yesterday's version so I can go back and find it?

Very confusing.
Click to expand...

There's no need to save them all with different dates. if you click the title at the top of the pages window and select "Browse all versions" it will bring up this screen http://i.imgur.com/4iKjU.png

Click the bar on the right hand side to scroll through the different versions of the document, and click "Restore" if you wish to restore to that document.
 
Whoa, I guess I'm old-fashioned and maybe this is an advance, but it's going to take some time to get used to
 
Lion will take some time getting used to. After using it since April, I would not go back to SL. Give it time and if you don't like some items, just don't use them. You can lock documents, choose not to save the state of applications if you quit them. Lots of options.
 
I also need autosave turned off. For example I might open a file with TextEdit and make some accidental changes to it. With autosave turned on TextEdit will automatically persist these changes that I don't want.
 
JackFerrod said:
I also need autosave turned off. For example I might open a file with TextEdit and make some accidental changes to it. With autosave turned on TextEdit will automatically persist these changes that I don't want.
Click to expand...

The idea is that you lock the document to prevent accidental changes

But yes, an option to turn this off would be great, I hate it auto saving my documents
 
The idea is that you lock the document to prevent accidental changes
Click to expand...

That seems totally the wrong way around to me. You have to take some action to not edit the document ;)
 
I actually like the auto-saving.

Now Apple have to add gestures to scroll between version, that would be nice. :p
 
JackFerrod said:
That seems totally the wrong way around to me. You have to take some action to not edit the document ;)
Click to expand...


it does this automatically after time for you (default is 2 weeks) after this you need to unlock the document (or duplicate) before making changes to it
 
it does this automatically after time for you (default is 2 weeks)
Click to expand...
Yes, I noticed that but that time period is totally arbitrary. I know it can be configured but at least for me its impossible to come up with a time-limit that is appropriate for all my files.

/me is chucking TextEdit.app out of the window and going back to good old MacVim :)
 
Tom8 said:
There's no need to save them all with different dates. if you click the title at the top of the pages window and select "Browse all versions" it will bring up this screen http://i.imgur.com/4iKjU.png

Click the bar on the right hand side to scroll through the different versions of the document, and click "Restore" if you wish to restore to that document.
Click to expand...

I tried this in Word (Office for Mac 2011), and couldn't make it work. Did I do something wrong? (Like maybe purchase Office?) Will it work at all with Office files, and if so, how?

TIA
b
 
I got bitten by autosave as well today.

I was comparing a ton of JPEGs today and I did that by making quick rough crops on the areas that needed to be compared.
Obviously Preview found it necessary to save that crop into the image. And upon closing it didn't ask me if I wanted to save.

Thank god for Time Machine but come on. What if I had done that to a bunch of images that weren't backed up by Time Machine yet?

I appreciate the feature but having it always on is NOT a good idea. Also Save As really has to come back. The duplicate thing is not a serious alternative.
 
Goldfinger said:
I got bitten by autosave as well today.

I was comparing a ton of JPEGs today and I did that by making quick rough crops on the areas that needed to be compared.
Obviously Preview found it necessary to save that crop into the image. And upon closing it didn't ask me if I wanted to save.

Thank god for Time Machine but come on. What if I had done that to a bunch of images that weren't backed up by Time Machine yet?

I appreciate the feature but having it always on is NOT a good idea. Also Save As really has to come back. The duplicate thing is not a serious alternative.
Click to expand...

Uh? have you used the new "revert to saved"" function in Lion (found in preview)? You can browse differend versions of your edits just like in time machine. Try it out.

I dont know if its good or bad yet...its differend workflow thats for sure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back