Thanks Erik!
What is saved when one powers down “regularly” by pressing the on/off encoder, and how (temporary / permanent) especially compared to suddenly cutting the power source?
1 Like
@echoicMalady I was wondering how “permanent save” of the pattern was permanent, wrt the saving of the project and the powering off. What about Sounds/Kits?
IMO all this is worth a whole paragraph on the Model series manuals.
To overcome the problem of losing unsaved progress, I recommend buying a large power bank (external battery) and a power cord for your M:S. I did it right away when I bought the groovebox and it helped me out more than once.
Agreed.
Powering Down: Powering the unit down via the encoder suspends the active working state of the last-opened project. This process doesn’t save any data to disk; it is akin to the ‘hibernate mode’ found on laptops.
Losing Power: The active working state will be lost and the project will be loaded from disk. All unsaved data will be lost.
Temp Save: This is not saved to disk and will be lost after powering down.
Pattern Save: Long-press [FUNC] + [SETTINGS] to save the current pattern to disk. This is a partial save of the project to disk. If you close the project without saving at this point, the saved pattern will remain on disk, but you will lose all other unsaved data.
Project Save: Saving the project will store the active state of the entire project to disk (though Temp Saves cannot be stored).
2 Likes
Thanks.
You got me checking the manual to ensure I wasn’t simply RTFMed. 
I couldn’t find anything about the suspended state feature in the manual besides the following:
When a project is loaded it becomes the active working state of the Model:Samples. From here it is possible to edit the patterns and samples of the project. Every time the Model:Samples is switched on, it boots to the active working state, the active project. [p.15]
I’ve mainly pieced this together through experimentation.
1 Like
That’s a very good start to covering what’s needed. I can’t quite picture if it’s complete, but having that in the manual might save a lot of head-scratching.
To be utterly complete for me, augmenting this with a picture would be ideal.
Caveat: this may contain errors, and it’s presentation could be MASSIVELY improved … but this gives the vague general idea of what I meant by “a picture”
1 Like
Great diagram!
However - it’s a wonderful illustration of Elektron as a company that really is capable of overcomplicating such straightforward things like probably no other company can 
I think this is the flip side of having a flexible solution when it comes to restoring your work in a live situation by basically having several points to restore your work from. But sure, it is a bit convoluted indeed 
It usually helps to figure things out if you think about why it has several states to reload from. But you can always treat it like how things work on devices “any other company” and just save the project and save the device’s complete current state.
3 Likes
This behaviour is such a nightmare to use in my eyes… Just auto (temp) save everything but don’t throw patterns/kits away.
I don’t wanna lose anything when I project save or the device gets cut from power.
I already forgot what I read 3 minutes ago on how to do proper saving. Also for the Analogs… still managing to have some old states of my projects because I forgot to save kits in nonactive patterns. Digis do so much better in that regard. Tiny bit more consistency in the productline would be awesome.
I don’t think an autosave would be a winner here. There are contexts in which saving should be the user’s discretion. For instance, I have a project full of drum machine patterns that I edit in use but don’t want to overwrite. In fact, I’d really like to make them write-protected in case I accidentally save the project one night. 
The actual save procedure works the same way as most of the outboard gear I own: you instigate saves manually, and naturally, unsaved data is lost if the device loses power.
If you’re worried about losing data due to power outages, the new Power Handle might be a good shout. FYI, when the battery is running low, the device goes into hibernation mode, and the state is resumed when the the device next receives power. It doesn’t take the liberty of overwriting your project data – you still have to choose whether to save or not. In this context, I think the behaviour is ideal.
BTW … have since discovered this diagram doesn’t correspond to what’s really going on … I still think we need a diagram though … preferably elektron-authored, not authored by someone else (e.g. me) who is more likely to make mistakes.
Can you shed any more light on how this does work?
I scanned over the whole thread. I’ve never had an issue losing anything (power outages or not) on my M:S. I always just use Save Project regularly while working–is there a reason not to do things this way? It is the same number of steps as save pattern I believe.
Save pattern is much quicker, long press on config button then tap the orange knob.
2 Likes
ive been wondering this myself because im new to M:S and ive come from working on computers that crash so save my stuff all the time as a habit!
if saving projects is so important its strange that it takes so many actions to do this. If i have the config menu already set on project it takes me 1 click of a button, 2 clicks of a knob, one turn of a knob and then another 3 clicks of the knob to save the active project!
A quick save of project function would be awesome for those of us that want to be safer.
Currently long hold on config button goes to edit pattern name. If i long hold func / config i seem to get the same - edit pattern name. a double up?
could long hold func / config turn into quick save project?
2 Likes
Look what I have discovered: I used handmade battery pack to power my MS with 6 ea AAA batteries. MS never understood when batteries are low and shuts off when batteries die. Everything that I was working on since power up usually was gone. but I found that the only time your pattern(s) you are working on is saved is when you power down properly! Even if you save your pattern manually to the project and right after that you loose power due to power outage or your power bank dies - you loose all your data since the last boot up due to not proper power down! But what I had is scary: Due to not proper power down I lost not only current pattern and projects i was working on but I lost all projects that were saved in the memory and were there for months! Only names of those projects remained and no sequenser data was there! All samples were ok. I was shoked! I know I shouldn’t play with unproper shutdowns and that’s the result. Ok - I have my projects saved on my PC in a new format - msprj that contain samples also. Actually all samples were still in MS. So I loaded those backup file of the projects but MS doesn’t play them - there is no sequencer data too! So I wander if MS is bad and can’t play projects? Maybe projects ere saved wrong way before? Now MS saves patterns, works fine, but I can’t get my backups to work in it. Don’t know. I did firmware update again, reset it, did empty reset and put projects in it again but still no luck! Looks like +Drive is corrupt but I can save new patterns and the are there. It’s just came into my mind: I’m thinking on one more thing - looks like I was opening those projects one by one that day and switched between them every time saving them of course but I didn’t power down the unit and all of them became kinda suspended because I didn’t do a shutdown yet and after momentary loosing power they all gone! But why I can’t make backup ones to work? Maybe renaming of projects will help? I doubt. Something went really wrong with the unit nd I’m very unhappy with the way MS is managing memory!
Time for elektron to definitively document this in a diagram ?