WTF? I just deleted 100GB of backup files from the secondary dir alone!
I love having backups, but something really needs to be done about this. I just deleted almost 100GB of rpp-bak files from the secondary location alone, which means close to the same amount is scattered elsewhere too!
I'm forced to use a secondary dir, as it's the only way that Reaper can recover projects before they've been saved.
Then when opening a backup, it's a total pain too because the file is clueless where it came from, and doesn't remember the save to new folder or copy files settings, which means if you don't remember to change those, everything gets messed up more by creating an unnecessary subfolder and copying or moving the files accidentally.
Ideally things should function like this:
-Upon reopening Reaper after a crash, ask the user if they wish to recover their work. One-click, no fuss, recovery. The user is already frustrated after a project crashes, this is not the time for the program to be adding to it.
-Limit the number of backups to a number a user specifies for each project, overwriting the oldest ones.
-Backups need to remember their directories and the existing save settings for the project (copy files, create new folder etc.)
-Unsaved projects should be recoverable without needing to duplicate everything into a secondary folder.
It was great with audio files got there own dir, and peak files can be tidy, but this backup situation is worse than both combined, and seems relatively simple to fix...
Sorry to rant about this, but after all of these years with no improvement here, it's hard not to get a bit frustrated especially when auto-saving was pretty much perfected back with Word '97.
There is an FR for this. For me, just limiting the number of files is fine. They just save in my project directory, and all is well. It's just having thousands of backup files that is ridiculous.
I don't want to lose anything, so I want lots of backups done frequently. But they need to overwrite each other, because my hard drive is not infinite in size, and it creates a bunch of clutter.
EDIT:
Found it. Vote for it here, and tell your friends.
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Slava Ukraini
Last edited by Sound asleep; 04-06-2014 at 07:06 AM.
having a lot of backups is very good thing.. they have saved me several times. but I've never needed to open a backup file more than one week old.
I like to have the option "Keep multiple versions" for the backup in the settings.. so only one backup file is generated to not clutter the project folder. Then I have enabled the "Save to timestamped file in additional directory" in another hard drive. I clean manually that folder once a month.
having a lot of backups is very good thing.. they have saved me several times. but I've never needed to open a backup file more than one week old.
I like to have the option "Keep multiple versions" for the backup in the settings.. so only one backup file is generated to not clutter the project folder. Then I have enabled the "Save to timestamped file in additional directory" in another hard drive. I clean manually that folder once a month.
maybe another way could be also if in the menu section, you can choose to keep a set number of backups for a project, or to automatically delete, or overwrite, the oldest file, when a new one is created, if it is older than x amount of time. Then you can sort of just leave it, it won't become way too huge, but it would keep backups on more of a time basis rather than a number basis.
It would use a bit of resources as well, but if I recall, you can set reaper not to make backups while recording or playing now.
10gb just deleted, all of which were actively being uploaded to my google drive account...
this is really, really a space eater. smarter backup strategies should be employed...."delete oldest after N backups have been created..." with an option to "rename last saved project"
The logic pro way of choosing how many backups to create and then deleting the oldest (as others have stated) is the best way I know of to sort it
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'You can do a search in your projects folder for *.bak, and it should find all of them.'
I do that every other day, after backing up my Reaper files and then I delete the .bak files.
The search is saved in my favourites folder (on the left of the explorer in windows 7)
Not much trouble.
I use an app called CronniX to automatically clean up the temp folder, moving anything older than a week to the trash. I think this can also be done with a combination of Automator and iCal.
You can probably set something up similar on Windows with the task scheduler.
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Wow, this must be some kind of record! 700+GB of rpp-bak files deleted! So many that Windows would crash trying to delete them all, I had to do small batches at a time.
You know, for the DAW with the lightest resource footprint and the cleanest codebase, Reaper sure loves to pig through disk space unnecessarily...
Thankfully this is really easy to address, I just wish it was a bit higher on the priority list.
(sorry for the multiple images, but Windows would crash trying to tell me the size of all the backups)
New(ish) user here. I'm glad I found this thread early on in my Reaper experience. I was curious why every project I "saved as" had a duplicate with a .bak extension. I assumed it was a "bak"up but what I can't understand is why there is more than one per Project folder. Isn't that all that's necessary and then wouldn't that be a temporary recovery file that disappears after the project is no longer open?
I guess it's nice to have lots of backups but it would indeed be nicer to be able to have some options as to how many can fill up a particular project folder.
I assumed it was a "bak"up but what I can't understand is why there is more than one per Project folder.
I have just one per project folder, and I'm pretty sure that's the default.
Check your settings under Options > Preferences > Project. Do you have 'Keep multiple versions' checked under 'Project saving'?
Check your settings under Options > Preferences > Project. Do you have 'Keep multiple versions' checked under 'Project saving'?
No, it's unchecked, however, the box above it, "When overwriting project file, rename old project to .rpp-bak" IS checked and that's definitely what's causing it. I do a Save As every 15 min or so adding a alphabetic suffix to each one...yea I know, ol' school. Then I Ctrl+S every minute or so. The Ctrl+S overwrite is creating an .rpp-back file for every Save-As I do. It's no biggie...nothing wrong backed up backups I guess.
The problem I have with doing a search and deleting them all, is that something may have happened to the final project save somehow, and I'd still like to have a backup or two for every project.
Going in and deleting all backups except for the last 2, is a real pain.
This is really a pretty basic issue with reaper, and imo should have priority over a lot of other things. It might not be a great sales pitch, because it is so basic, but it is, imo, a necessary feature for a real grownup DAW. Being able to modify themes though, not so much.
Another problem with manually deleting backups is that it will change the "modified" date on a project folder and I often use that information to quickly find and sort projects by when they were last worked on or backed up.
set up a task scheduler to clear the temp files after a week.
Its a non-issue for me.
So, your task scheduler is deleting your past few number of good backups with all the ones you may not want, or do you have it running a script that can look at your different files and keep the last X number for each project based on the name?
Auto-deleting would do the exact same thing to the folder timestamp because it is a change to the contents of the folder. Until the magic do it for me option arrives, take the time (it is worth it) to police projects as you use them. It's basic organization. If I have been working on several projects over a week for example I do the following:
1. Open the project folder, Search for *.UNDO and *.BAK sort the results by modified.
2. Delete all but the last UNDO file.
3. Delete all but the last one or two project backup files.
Done, takes less that a couple minutes to do multiple projects.
Or...
1. Save as (copy files, create directory). This only copies the current backup/undo (keep me honest that it does that).
2. Delete the old directory.
Anything important deserves some mental attention, even if it were automatic. It's impossible to get into this 100GB situation unless some completely ignores things for a period of time.
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So, your task scheduler is deleting your past few number of good backups with all the ones you may not want, or do you have it running a script that can look at your different files and keep the last X number for each project based on the name?
It deletes autobackups and peak files older than 7 days.
I keep my most recent backup - the one that is created when you hit CMD-S - in the project folder.
Autobackups are only needed if you are working and there's a crash. If that happens I go to my autobackups folder on my desktop and recover the project. Otherwise the project has saved correctly and there's no need for an old backup.
I explain how backups work in the video I linked above but I'll embed it again here
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Just think there needs to be an option in the prefs for "keep the most recent x number of backups INSIDE the project folder." It's hard to get a reasonable, self-maintaining backup system with the current options but that would work fine for me.
I autosave every 2 minutes and don't think about cleaning them up until my hard drive is getting full and then I go, "oh gee, half my hard drive was backups!"
Just think there needs to be an option in the prefs for "keep the most recent x number of backups INSIDE the project folder." It's hard to get a reasonable, self-maintaining backup system with the current options but that would work fine for me.
I autosave every 2 minutes and don't think about cleaning them up until my hard drive is getting full and then I go, "oh gee, half my hard drive was backups!"
I really can't disagree with that idea except....
It would be delving into very dangerous territory to have Reaper deleting stuff this potentially important. I know it is simple criteria to go by but I would be nervous as heck to write code that deleted user data because there is always a chance something could go wrong and that is one bug no one wants to hit during the alpha, beta or release stage.
Maybe just overwrite that last 5 in ring buffer fashion might be closer, not sure. At least that way we are cycling through the same 5 backups all the time.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Maybe just overwrite that last 5 in ring buffer fashion might be closer, not sure. At least that way we are cycling through the same 5 backups all the time.
Yea, just like that. No deleting files, just overwriting the Reaper-created files in a loop sequence.
Some versioning options would be nice as well, like "increment filename every x hours." I don't mind doing it manually, but you know, for completeness and convenience and general idiot-proofing.
does your system crash so often that you need backups every two minutes? Mine are at 6 min and I've never lost more than a couple envelope points and my train of thought.
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does your system crash so often that you need backups every two minutes?
no but i work really fast sometimes. at 3 minutes i lost some crucial changes/additions i couldn't reproduce with an ill timed crash on more than one occasion but i'm happy with 2. and i don't crash much at all these days, since i weeded out the bad plugs.
Keep x number of most recent timestamped backups of current project file (deletes older ones - no undo!)
Scans the current project directory (and all its sub-directories) for backups (.rpp-bak) of the current project. Keeps the set number of backups and deletes all older ones. Action cannot be undone.
- Number of backups to keep is set inside the script (default=5)
- Keeps one backup per different date no matter what
- Works with timestamped backups only
- Can be combined with Save action (40026) into a custom action, so that it tides things up each time you save.**
- Requires JS_ReaScriptAPI
Keep x number of most recent timestamped backups of current project file (deletes older ones - no undo!)
Scans the current project directory (and all its sub-directories) for backups (.rpp-bak) of the current project. Keeps the set number of backups and deletes all older ones. Action cannot be undone.
- Number of backups to keep is set inside the script (default=5)
- Keeps one backup per different date no matter what
- Works with timestamped backups only
- Can be combined with Save action (40026) into a custom action, so that it tides things up each time you save.
- Requires JS_ReaScriptAPI
in ReaPack
It has to be native at some point but for now this looks very promising, thanks!
I have just started testing it and it does not show up as running action.. is that normal? Does it work nonetheless if I put it into my startup action?
Also, I suppose this only works once the project is saved and a project directory created.. I (and probably others) often do a lot of experimentation before we decide to save a project and thus we need backups for unsaved projects. Can it be made to also work with unsaved projects? For example by referencing a temporary backup directory and once the project is saved move the backups to the project directory and continue doing them there?
It would be extra greatness if it created a folder called "Backups" inside the project directory to save the backups to and keep the Project directory tidy.
EDIT:
Sadly does not work :/ I have now more backups in the project directory than specified in the script..
EDIT2: Oh now I got how it works! It is just an action to manually delete all older backups once there are more than specified. Got my hopes up that this did all the backup weeding automatically as a running script.