Writing a very important document needs some care, a reliable backup is crucial.
In addition, versioning system is very helpful. It is different from the backup because you can go back in time and revert back to some of the changes you made. Not all the changes we make on our document are useful. We could make mistakes. You wish you have the old version of your file. Version is a great strategy to make a carefree editing. You can get the old version anyways: why do you worry to make the changes. It improves your productivity as you are relieved of wrong changes.
Subversion has been the most dominant system for ages. Now, Git has replaced it. But, even if these tools are as useful for writers as for developers, they are less popular among writers probably because of the technical nature of them. I have been using Git for a while to keep versions of my latex files. My latex editor, TexSTudio even supports committing git commands.
After a while, I have however realized that I often forget to commit my changes. Sometimes, I want to revert back; learning that I have no version of that certain editing. I tried to supplement the git system with Keyboard maestro to automatically commit. It was working fine. Still, things become too hectic when I made a lot of changes distributed in many folders. The files are also not all latex. so, I need commit them with a separate program (via the Terminal). So, looking around for other solution. One strategy is to rely on Time Machine, as many people do. The problem with time machine it that it is less configurable. I want more versions on some files and less on others. Some files are crucial: I wanted them versioned in every 20-30 minute because I often want to refer back the old versions.
In addition, as it tries to copy all the files in the disk, Time machine is a huge resource hog. When I was using it, it topped the applications which consume the most of energy of my machine. It sucks the battery juice from my machine. Furthermore, Time Machine doesn’t support bookable backups. They are very useful in case of crisis. That is where I started to check out Chronosync.
I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner for keeping bootable backups. CCC also keeps versions of files, to be fair. But, the versioning system in CCC is not really useful to keep track of changes in a file. That is when I decided to migrate to Chronosync. This beast does both the syncing and the versioning like a pro.
Chronosyc permits a more fine-tuned backup and versioning schema. You can tell it to backup some folders just once in a day (say the downloads folder) while versioning the most active, working folder, Projects folder, every 30 minutes. Best of all, your mac will never be chocking and crying due to over-working. Since you can dissect your backups into manageable bits, Chronosync doesn’t eat up your RAM or heat up your CPU, unlike the TimeMachine.
Chronosync is like Swiss army for both tasks of versioning and backing up.
Dellu 