Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

On Tuesday, January 8, 2002, at 12:49  PM, adamhertzano wrote:

>  - Hopefully, a " Backing up " (while saving) Messege to let know
> that the machine is actually backing up would be friendly, and would
> prevent unfortunate loss of Data.
> its still alittle hard to tell whether the machines is Saving ,
> Baking Up, stuck, Or ....

There *is* a message when a unit is compacting/backing up. In the latest 
software it will even allow you to 'defer' the compact/backup to a later 
time. This is done for the case that you are in the middle of a 
performance and you don't want to go 'offline' at that instant (the 
compact/backup can take a few minutes).  Of course this will mean that 
the thing that you are currently trying to save won't be save-able until 
after you allow the compact/backup to complete. If you power down before 
you allow it to compact/backup/save, yes, your changes will be lost.

There should be no lost data unless you power down (or lose power) 
*while* the compact/backup is being done - and the screen will indicate 
that is in progress. There have been some comments (or speculation?) 
that data can be lost if you power down during a simple 'save' (i.e. a 
save that doesn't require a compact/backup.) That is very unlikely 
because it only takes a few milliseconds to do the actual save in those 
cases. You would have to power down at nearly the exact instant that you 
hit save - a very small window of <in>opportunity.

One other place where edits could be lost is where you edit a parameter 
in one of the 'global' menus, - i.e. the Global/Master/Controller/MIDI 
menus where there is no explicit Save command. You must exit the menu 
first before powering down, because that is when the actual save is done.

If someone can show a loss of data in other cases, please let us know. 
That shouldn't happen and it is not something that we are aware of, and 
therefore no fix is in the works.

Scott