I am running under 10.12 Sierra and tested “versions browsing” a lot. It is actually nicer than time machine. It is more responsive. Sometimes time machine can take an insanely long time before it becomes responsive. The worst I got out of “versions browsing” was siting around for 30 seconds before it responded.
I’m guess your work place won’t let you attach a drive to your Mac. You can use a small time machine backup disk by disabling the back up every where but one folder. But still time machine only backs up very so often.
When doing testing (Alpha or Beta) I name a program something like The “program #1” then I do a test, then save, go to finder and press command-d and rename the new file “program #2” and so on. Then I have a record of every attempt. Sometimes I get up to “program #78” or something but if I get an error I can go back and see what happened. Sometime a problem starts in say try 23 and then crashes in try 27. Once a person gets used to this it isn’t that big of a distraction. I put my previous versions in a separate folder and display the folder in list view sorted by last added. Then when the folder is expanded out you can see at what time each new version was used. This can sometime help identify when something unrelated to the testing happened and might be a cause for the problem I am currently having. When my testing is done I throw out all the old versions.
While I would not do important work with beta software this process would definitely add a significant level of protection to what you have now. If you use the method I described always make sure the oldest file goes in the folder and you are using the newest version. Always save the SD document before making a Finder copy. That’s the only 2 things you have to physically do. You can use a cell phone and have an alarm go off every 5 minutes. Then every 5 minutes you get a back up. Just turn down the sound enough on the phone so the continuous alarm sound does not bother other people. Then your back up system turns into a cell phone you already have and small amount of periodic Finder work which is free.
If I’m feeling really lazy I put the file in a folder by itself and just do a command-D on the most recently created file and let Finder sequentially rename the file. Finder names it the file name with “copy” appended to the name and after that it just keeps incrementing the number appended. It can get up to insanely big numbers it appends without having a problem.
But if you willing to put just the single script file you working with in a folder a simple Applet can can do a cheap (free) backup. The Applet checks a time interval set by the user for the file with the latest date in the folder and if there has been changes since the last backup was made it automatically make a copy of the file with the latest modification date. It also checks to make sure the file with the latest modification date is not an autosave file. The current script does not back up autosave files. The is specifically designed to automatically back up AppleScript files. It not a general case backup script.
This is a pretty simple script so if there is something you don’t like it can be modified. The Applet is called “The Applet”. I made a zip archive of the applet and uploaded it to this post.
The property TheBackupFolderPath is where you would enter the path for the folder where your folder with the single script file is located.
FiveMinutes is a property that holds the number of seconds in five minutes.
OldestDate is a very old date basically back when Apple first started. It is used to start a loop that finds the latest modified date for a file in the the folder.
TheBackupFolderPath is the path to the folder to back up.
Here is the script
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
-- property FiveMinutes : minutes * minutes
property FiveMinutes : 10
property OldestDate : date "Tuesday, January 1, 1980 at 12:00:00 AM"
property LatestDate : OldestDate
property TheBackupFolderPath : "Bills second iMac HD:Users:bill:Desktop:untitled folder 3"
on IsAutoSavedFile(ThePath)
local ThePath
local TheFile
local EndOfFileName
-- This handler returns true if ThePath points to an Autosaved file
tell application "Finder"
set TheFile to item ThePath
set ThePath to TheFile as string
tell application "System Events" to set NameExtension to name extension of file (TheFile as string)
set EndOfFileName to "(Autosaved)." & NameExtension
if (name of TheFile as string) ends with EndOfFileName then
return true
else
return false
end if
end tell
end IsAutoSavedFile
on FindLatestModifiedFile(ThePath)
tell application "Finder"
set TheFolder to item ThePath
set FileList to files of TheFolder
set NewestFile to missing value
set OldestDateString to "1/1/1980"
set NewestDate to OldestDate
repeat with TheFile in FileList
-- set CDate to creation date of TheFile
set ModDate to modification date of TheFile
if (ModDate > NewestDate) and not my IsAutoSavedFile(TheFile as string) then
set NewestFile to TheFile
set NewestDate to modification date of TheFile
end if
end repeat
NewestFile
end tell
end FindLatestModifiedFile
on idle
tell application "Finder"
set TheFile to my FindLatestModifiedFile(TheBackupFolderPath)
if (modification date of TheFile) > LatestDate then
-- There are unsaved changes
set TheLatestFile to TheFile
set LatestDate to modification date of TheLatestFile
duplicate TheFile to TheBackupFolderPath with exact copy without replacing
end if
return name of TheFile
end tell
return FiveMinutes
end idle
on run
end run
The applet.app.zip (58.8 KB)
Bill