Folder Auto Snapshot

File & Folder Snapshots feature allows Team Computers to automatically create periodic, timestamped snapshots of the /Outputs folder on the desktop. Snapshots are taken every 30 minutes, preserving a recoverable history of your work while keeping storage usage efficient.

How It Works

When this feature is enabled, the system creates an /Outputs folder on the desktop of the team computer. For files in this folder, the system creates a timestamped folder inside Vagon Files/Outputs/ for each snapshot cycle and records the folder state.

• Full files are saved when a file is new or has been modified since the last snapshot (detected via modified date).

• File references are recorded in Files.txt for files that have not changed, avoiding redundant copies of unchanged data.

A Files.txt file is included in every snapshot folder, listing all file names present in Desktop/Outputs at the time of the snapshot — regardless of whether each file was modified or not. This gives you a complete inventory of your working directory at every point in time.

If Desktop/Outputs is empty, Files.txt will contain the following line:

[INFO] No files to backup - source folder is empty

Snapshots are created separately for each session. The system checks the initial folder state when the computer starts, then creates snapshot folders by comparing against the previous snapshot state of the /Outputs folder. Because of this, if a file already exists in /Outputs from a previous session, it is treated as a new file in the next session's snapshots.

Snapshot Cycle

Desktop/Outputs/          →   Vagon Files/Outputs/
                                ├── t/           (session start)
                                ├── t+30/        (30 min later)
                                ├── t+60/        (60 min later)
                                └── ...

Example

Assume your Desktop/Outputs folder contains the following files at the start of a session:

File	Description	Modified Since Previous Snapshot
quarterly_report.docx	Word Document	true
financials.pptx	Financials Presentation	false
sales_data.csv	Data Export	false

Snapshot at t (session start)

All files are new to this session, so all are copied in full:

Vagon Files/Outputs/t/
├── quarterly_report.docx
├── financials.pptx
├── sales_data.csv
└── Files.txt         ← lists quarterly_report.docx, financials.pptx, sales_data.csv

Snapshot at t+30 (user saved changes to quarterly_report.docx)

Only the modified file is copied. The unchanged files are referenced in Files.txt:

Vagon Files/Outputs/t+30/
├── quarterly_report.docx  ← updated version
└── Files.txt              ← lists quarterly_report.docx, financials.pptx, sales_data.csv

Snapshot at t+60 (no files saved between snapshots)

No modified files, so only the inventory file is created:

Vagon Files/Outputs/t+60/
└── Files.txt              ← lists quarterly_report.docx, financials.pptx, sales_data.csv

Storage Efficiency

This incremental approach is intentional. Copying every file in full at every cycle would rapidly consume available disk space — especially with large project files. By storing only changed files and referencing unchanged ones in Files.txt, the system keeps your snapshot history complete without unnecessary duplication.

This feature is available upon request. Please contact the Vagon team to enable it.