Using Stata when living with powercuts. Autosave function.

[Aashish Mehta]

I regularly encounter the following problem. I have read many/all the posts on do file recovery, but none address the core problem. I live in Southern California, where the electricity is turned off fairly frequently without warning due to fire hazards. I lose work almost every time this happens. I work in Stata 17, on a desktop computer, and have set my preferences to autosave before running. However, because I work on very large datasets, I run my code one segment at a time, and doing this does not trigger the auto-save. I am also regularly called away from my desk without warning, and often kept away for for several hours, which is long enough to risk a power outage. I do understand that we are supposed to remember to save our work frequently, and usually manage it, but this simply doesn't happen when one is frequently interrupted and the power is unreliable, which makes an auto-recover option indispensable. I imagine that adding this shouldn't be that hard. I also imagine that Stata users worldwide with unreliable electricity grids would be appreciative.Two questions.

1. Could Stata please add an autorecover feature to the do file editor (e.g. the capability to save an autorecovery version every 15 minutes).
2. Can anybody recommend a coding environment (IDE) that is set up to work with Stata and will autosave versions of my code?

Thank you!

[Andrew Lover]

Sublime has autosave, and multiple packages for Stata syntax.

[William Lisowski]

In our area, we are subject to power dips during thunderstorms - momentary dropouts, just enough to cause a reboot.

For twenty years now we have used a Universal Power Supply between our wall outlet and our desktop computers, which lets our desktop systems ride out a power dip, and which when the power is fully lost, gives us time to shut down gracefully.

With that said, in Stata 17 for Mac, in Preferences > Windows > Do-File Editor, just below the checkbox for Always save before do/run, there is a Backup modified documents selector that I have set to "Every 30 seconds".

[William Lisowski]

Actually, we have used a UPS which stands for Uninterruptible - not Universal - Power Supply. My excuse is that I haven't had to think about it for 20 years.

[Aashish Mehta]

Thank you Andrew and William. I will try Sublime and have ordered a UPS. The fact that Stata on Mac has a "Backup modified documents" option makes it all the more odd that Stata for Windows does not.