Newer Users and Save issues

[Jeff Kogut]

We have two users that have been on ArchiCAD for 6 and 10 months. Both at times have had data loss, infrequently, more than once. They are issues that I can't reverse engineer. There must be some level of user error, but I can't quite figure out what is going on and I'd like to have a coherent discussion as to why they have these issues. I'm wondering if you all can suss out a couple of scenarios.

Both are solo projects and I've included our Data Safety and Integrity setup as a pic. Files save to our server and are backed up to Crashplan nightly.

1. Drafter has data saved from yesterday (2/23) morning and end of day in his file this morning (2/24). But yesterdays work from the middle part of the day is missing. Drafter claims he a) didn't hold down CTRL+Z; b) had the same file open all day and didn't close and reopen it; c) he uses CTRL+S during the day to save. User may or may not have had another instance of AC running, but a different project as an example (i.e., not the same file as Read Only).


2. Another drafter uses File | Save several times during the day. Infrequently, every few weeks, he reports going to File | Save but gets the Save As dialogue box. If he gets this issue he hits Cancel, then CTRL+S on the keyboard. He works the rest of the day and closes and saves upon exit. The next day he opens the file and all of his data since getting the Save As prompt is gone (despite the CTRL+S and saving upon exit). User says only one instance of AC running. I'm imploring him to call me over next time this happens so I can witness it.


I've not had any of these issues myself. We had one experienced (8+ years AC) user get the 'Save As' issue once. Could there be some perfect storm of I/O requests writing to the server that overload it? (Server is a modern, year old setup with 1tb SSD's in RAID 1.)

Could there be an issue at the workstation? They are all SSD's, but various brands and firmwares.

Can anyone shed light on how these users might be doing this?

[Jeff Kogut]

So far this seems to have happened on PC's which have Samsung 840/850 SSD's.

[Barry Kelly]

Jeff wrote:
So far this seems to have happened on PC's which have Samsung 840/850 SSD's.

I don't think that would make much difference if they are saving to a server.
Sounds like the link to the server is breaking.

Occasionally some of our guys (all PC) have said they have saved (to server) but can not find it later.
We never have figured it out as it doesn't happen when testing.
Because of this some of out users insist they work from the file on their local hard drive and manually copy back to the server.

Barry.

[Jeff Kogut]

Hi Barry, I'm not sure if I'm comforted or distressed that we are not the only ones having this issue. It seems like some sort of file validation should take place when saving back to the server and that it shouldn't instantly time-out and bring up the Save As dialogue.

[Erwin Edel]

Sounds to me like the are opening the .BPN files.

This would explain missing 'half the work' and getting the Save As... prompt.

[Jeff Kogut]

One user reports he selects a recent project from the links on the 'Start ArchiCAD 20' dialogue box when ArchiCAD opens, so a .bpn wouldn't be an option. The other user browses each time and is pretty uptight about choosing the file as he's been burned a few times by this and lost several days of work. But human error is always a possibility.

[Erwin Edel]

For what it is worth, we only have problems with network connections on our Macbook Pro workplaces, due to how broken/unreliable SMB can be on mac. The windows workstations have never experienced problems with saving to network location. We have a windows server, running small business server 2008.

Human error is allways unfortunate. Personally all I can do to avoid the accidental forgetting to save etc is opening any reference projects and such on my 2nd screen as a visual clue. Renaming copies of variantions in pln/pla format etc also has helped, as having 2 files with the same name, but in different file locations doesn't show on the ArchiCAD title bar.