Ahoy,
Autodesk management:

I am a long
time user of Autocad --  presently
ACAD11.

Your drawing
recovery 'schemes' are for IT's and other 'geeks' who are not troubled by the complexity
of the process.

We engineers
and designers --USERS OF YOUR PROGRAM 
--  mostly don't know how to make
our way through the drawing recovery process. We are designing things, not
mastering IT/geek tasks!  Look at sources
--  such as your web sites and Google
--  to see how mystified many of we ACAD
users are about how to recover a lost drawing despite a five minute automatic
save.

You properly
ought to be seriously embarrassed about this delinquency on your part.

I just lost
a couple of hours work, due to a 'shut-down'.

I've spent a
good hour, trying, one more time, to recover a 
--.SV$ file.    I expect that it is there   -- 
somewhere  -- but I'm not clever
enough to find it.

The SV$ file
should be parked out in plain view, for all to see, immediately  below the .dwg and .bak file,  so that one can re-establish/reconstruct  where you were before --  five minutes before.

You guys are
paid a lot of $$$$$$$$  (what? not enough
digits??) to solve these problems.

And, I'm an
old retired Navy guy, bitching about what you are up-to.

But:  I knew how to take names and kick ass!.

Fix it
!!!! 

Enjoy      / s/  
Bob     

I doubt Autodesk management will hear you here. But in any case the temporary SV$ files can be just renamed to .DWG. Or you may consider the SureSave utility for more intensive "autosave" functionality.

Might as well spit in the wind while you are at it too Bob.You do not have to be in IT or a geek to learn what the file types are and what can or cannot be done with them when it comes to recovering lost work.  AutoDesk published a white paper about the topic which is available on their website.  It can be found with a simple search.Here is the link to the white paper.  It took about 5 seconds to find and that includes going from the CADforum to the AutoDesk website.http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Understanding-AutoCAD-backup-and-autosave-files.htmlMy advice is to print it out and tape or pin it to the wall adjacent to your computer so you will have it the next time the same thing happens.  And yes, there will be a next time.Now, save your voice for yelling at the umpire when baseball season gets underway or at the refs during March Madness.

John Connor2015-03-19 11:44:26