Autosave not working

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

it appears that my Autosave is not working.  This morning, AutoCAD froze, and I eventually had to use task manager to close it.  When I reopened, I found that I had not manually saved my work the night before, and that the files still open this morning when AutoCAD froze had not been autosaved either, despite my working on them all day yesterday.  There was zero recognition from AutoCAD that these files had been open at all:  they were only saved to my last manual save from the day before yesterday. 

Autosave is and has always been on, with ten minutes between saves.

Went to Drawing Recovery and there was no sign of any autosaves. 

Went to the Temp folder where autosaves should be, and there was nothing.

This has happened once before.  I usually religiously hit Save routinely, but every once in a while one forgets.. Any help to understand why I am not getting autosave files, so that I don't lose a whole day's worth of work again, would be much appreciated.  My old AutoCAD version worked great with this, but ever since upgrading to AutoCAD 2018 this has been an issue. 

[pendean]

Whole day's work lost? You never saved in an 8+hour work day? Is your BAK file truly 24-hours old? Was it frozen this morning before you touched it or did you start work for a while then it froze? Just curious bout the description posted more than anything.

Is your PC, or the files location, not backed up overnight?
Are you logged into Windows as admin, or restricted user?
Which TEMP folder did you look in exactly? List the full address is you can.
What is your SAVETIME set to? What is your ISAVEPERCENT set to?

Thanks.

[gotphish001]

Dean can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is how it works off the top of my head as I don't have time to look it up right this second. The autosave doesn't start working until you at least save the drawing once manually after you open it. So if you opened the drawing, worked on it for 8 hours and never saved it then autosave won't kick in. Once you save it the first time after opening it that will kick in autosaves.

This seems dumb but, I imagine it works like this  in case you want to open a drawing up and try something really fast but you don't want to save it or someone opens your drawing and does the same. If you didn't want to save it then you wouldn't want it to over write the autosaves either. That's why you need the initial save to let autocad know, yes I want autosaves to over write old autosaves.

[pendean]

@gotphish001 I did not think about that being a possibility, yikes! AFAIK you are then correct Nick if that is the case.

[Anonymous]

Pendean,

to answer your questions:

--AutoCAD froze when I had just started working on it this morning, pretty much immediately.

--The bak file was over 24 hours old.

--PC is not backed up overnight.

--Logged into windows as user, not admin

--The temp folder under Automatic Save File Location:  C:\Users\myname\appdata\local\temp\

--SAVETIME is set to 10

--ISAVEPERCENT is set to 50..

[Anonymous]

Wanted to add to this that in keeping an eye on my open file today, with F2 text window up, I can see that autosave is working in that it's listing an autosave, and that it is being saved to the temp folder, but when I go to the temp folder as listed the autosave file is not there..

[pendean · Accepted solution]

ISAVEPERCENT should always be set to 0. Never anything else.

When you manually save, the SV$ autosave file disappears (or it should). It also starts the AutoSAVE working.

If you rely solely on AutoSAVE (foolish endeavor) you ought to see a BAK file after 20-minutes (based on your 10 setting) but never an SV$ until you crash (then there is no guarantee,depending on the type of crash, if it is a system level or application).

Your Windows log-in may be restricting the use of the system level TEMP folder as just a user: you should make an effort to create your own TEMP folder, separate from the log-in temp folder, then set AutoCAD to use it (OPTIONS command, FILES tab, open ever category listed with the word TEMP in it and assign it to this folder).

You need to be working with your IT on getting nightly automatic backups and perhaps a better level log-in to Windows if allowed.

There is never a good substitution for a manual save. Never. Everyone has time to manually save and often. Start training yourself to do so, nd start adding QSAVE command to whatever buttons you click in AutoCAD so it is more automatic.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

pendean, thanks for the assistance.
One question on this: If the BAK file is supposed to update while the file
is open, why hasn't it?

[pendean]

Your high ISAVEPERCENT setting is most likely the problem there: the BAK file in your TEMP folder is the one I was talking about BTW.

[mlara4DJG6]

That did not work. I actually created a folder on the C drive called c:/ACAD/TEMP. Didn’t even saved there. Automatic save was .AC$ and save time of 10 minutes. Once I opened the CAD file I manually saved after 2-3 minutes , then continued working all the day starting at 8:35 am. I left work and left without closing AutoCAD. When I checked in at 8:00 am. AutoCAD was already closed. No sign of fatal error or file recovery needed when I opened the file. I then realized that the file was last saved at 8:40 am yesterday. The *.bak was even older than the CAD file. I am using 2022 version.

[mlara4DJG6]

That did not work. I actually created a folder on the C drive called c:/ACAD/TEMP. Didn’t even saved there. Automatic save was .AC$ and save time of 10 minutes. Once I opened the CAD file I manually saved after 2-3 minutes , then continued working all the day starting at 8:35 am. I left work and left without closing AutoCAD. When I checked in at 8:00 am. AutoCAD was already closed. No sign of fatal error or file recovery needed when I opened the file. I then realized that the file was last saved at 8:40 am yesterday. The *.bak was even older than the CAD file. I am using 2022 version.

[RobDraw]

How can you say it didn't work when you have no idea of how the computer shut down?

Going that long without saving and relying on autosaves is asking for lost work. Why would you do that?

[mlara4DJG6]

It doesn’t happen in 2009 version. If Autocad crashes, you have backup files *.bak, *.SV$ and *.AC$. If Autocad prematurely shuts down you get a recovery option. Didn’t see it happen here. The workstation was on sleep mode with Autocad still on. After logging in the next day, Autocac is no longer running but other apps still on, Outlook, windows explorer, Adobe DC pro. The files being worked on was a day older and didn’t save any work done.  

[mlara4DJG6]

It doesn’t happen in 2009 version. If Autocad crashes, you have backup files *.bak, *.SV$ and *.AC$. If Autocad prematurely shuts down you get a recovery option. Didn’t see it happen here. The workstation was on sleep mode with Autocad still on. After logging in the next day, Autocac is no longer running but other apps still on, Outlook, windows explorer, Adobe DC pro. The files being worked on was a day older and didn’t save any work done.  

[RobDraw]

That doesn't mean that AutoCAD crashed. In fact, it's more likely that it closed without crashing than autosave not working.

Time for you to start saving more frequently and definitely when you are going away from the computer for extended periods.

[onayohob23]

This is a BS answer to be frank. Something is fundamentally broken with Autosave and it has been for a long time by the looks of it. I'm using AutoCAD 23 and just had the same thing happen to me as described by the OP. The file was manually saved at midday, something happened which caused the drawing to close, the drawing did not 'autosave' at the 10 minute interval and instead I had to locate the .bak file which was generated 30 minutes prior to AutoCAD sh*ting the bed! 30 minutes' work lost on this occasion, could have been much worse. This is not a one off occurrence either. In every single occasion when CAD freezes/crashes I have not once seen the file saved 10 minutes earlier

[RSomppi]

Autosave does not save to working file. There are autosave files stored elsewhere that need to be renamed before opening.