ZA Furries

Hey guys. It's probably nothing, but I'm dealing with a bit of a situation here and it's freaking me out ever so slightly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've spent all day working on my novel, like usual. I finished and saved, like usual. But then, when I went to back up my work to a flash drive (I do this every day) I noticed something weird. Yesterday my work was 2 764 KB big (the version on my flash drive) but today's version is only 2 760 KB big. Four KB might not sound like much, but it equates to about 1 500 words. (I use MS Word 2013, btw.)

Now, at first I thought it must be because I deleted some unnecessary paragraphs. I'm in an editing phase right now, so I often hack away more words than I put in. But I keep track of the changes I make to my manuscript and there is no way I deleted over 1 500 words. I spent most of my time today tweaking, editing and optimising, deleting some paragraphs and replacing them with new ones. I also changed the order of some of the chapters into something that would flow a bit better, but I didn't actually modify those chapters (apart from correcting some spelling and grammar mistakes). So, if anything, my work should have stayed about the same size (give or take a KB).

I opened the two versions of my manuscript (today's version and the back up from yesterday) to compare them, looking for any giant whacks of text I might have accidentally deleted without realising it, or maybe I cut something without pasting it again, but I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Everything is there and accounted for.

So where did those four KiloBytes disappear to? I am super paranoid about stuff like this, especially when it comes to my novel. I haven't overwritten my back up yet, just in case, so the worst case scenario is that I lose one day of work, but I'd still like to know how my manuscript could suddenly have shrunk by 4KB for no apparent reason.

Could cutting and pasting a large number of pages and switching them around have an impact on a Word document's size, even if the word count stays the same?

It could have messed with the formatting somehow, which might explain the discrepancy.

I think the most likely cause is the difference between the actual file size and the size disc. The file might now be located in a smaller sector and thus have a smaller size on disc.

It could be because of compression...

Text compression works by using sample words as a dictionary,
Comparing words...

If there were 100 new unique words. It would use more space than 100 repetitions of the same word....



It could also be like cape suggested, the sector size... Sectors are usually exactly 4KB...

I'm just so paranoid because the file sizes have always made perfect sense. If I write 1 500 new words, my manuscript becomes 4KB bigger. If I delete a few paragraphs, it becomes 1 or 2 smaller. This was the first time in literally my entire writing career that an editing session in which I didn't really delete much suddenly resulted in a loss of 4KB. In my mind, it meant I must have accidentally deleted 1 500 words somewhere. I spent over an hour just reading and re-reading today's work, trying to figure out where I messed up, where I misplaced almost 5 whole pages of text.

But if it really is possible for a Word document to suddenly become 4KB smaller without actually losing any of its content, then that comes as a huge relief.

Thank you, guys.

If you're still worried though, you could always use version control software, which has the added bonus of allowing non-linear changes and rollbacks.

Thanks, Lee. I'll be sure to look into it.

I would recommend Apache Subversion with the TortoiseSVN client.

You wouldn't benefit from the additional functionality that Git provides, and TortoiseSVN is a lot more usable than TortoiseGit.

Sev wrote:I would recommend Apache Subversion with the TortoiseSVN client.

You wouldn't benefit from the additional functionality that Git provides, and TortoiseSVN is a lot more usable than TortoiseGit.

SVN is a code repository, and works best with text files, which MS Word docs are not. Since it's a binary file, it may actually store the whole file with each revision. Not huge, but still not ideal.

This is not quite the thing for version control, unless you get a version control package specifically for archiving such documents. I prefer cloud storage solutions, with built-in version control (like Google Drive).

Ah, yes, I did not realize that MS Word docs are saved as binary files.

If that's the case, then I would just use Dropbox. You'll loose the advantage of change tracking, but if you can't make use of it in the first place...

Cloud storage is evil. Don't do it. >.>

How do you do version control, then?

Usually I don't. Or just keep a copy of the previous version of a file. But I'm sure there are non-cloud ways to do version control. Ways that don't sacrifice control of the data.

I'd rather risk the aether than oblivion...

Rakuen Growlithe wrote:Cloud storage is evil. Don't do it. >.>

Why? I have a second emergency back up of my novel in Dropbox, just in case a natural disaster wipes out my laptop and my flash drive in one fell swoop. Is there a problem with cloud storage I don't know about?

Eh... It does have advantages but I think too many people just blindly use it without any thought or consideration as to where their data goes, how it is protected and who could access it.

Might as well not use Google while we're at it...

I mostly don't. My default search engine is Duck Duck Go and my email is now from a small German company. My Gmail exists mostly because of Android. I do have Youtube now but only after they removed the Google+ requirements. (I made a Vimeo account before that for some non-furry videos)

Best take it to the next level and disconnect your mobile phone. You're being tracked, after all.

Can't do much to help that but my entire phone is encrypted. SMSes are secured in a further layer of encryption. And the same programme can send encrypted SMSes and make encrypted phone calls if others have the same software. But now we're straying off topic.

The original question has been answered. There's no point to staying on topic.