# 4.1 Safety

As mentioned in General settings, the **Backup** feature is ON by default. It is highly recommended to keep it that way! You may also like to invoke the **Autosave** feature. Whereas a *.BAK* file represents the penultimate version of your work, Autosave will *create a copy* of the *current* file state.

Autosave will only be invoked when LMMS is *idle*, so it will not by default happen in replay or during export! You control the interval between each Autosave. Because an autosave results in a tiny drop in performance, you find the settings for using Autosave in Settings > Performance. A choice of 5 - 15 mins is recommended. The default is 5 mins. If LMMS crashes it is very important that you pay attention to the screen next time you open LMMS! You will get 2 options from Autosave:

1. **Ignore:** anything Autosave has kept will be deleted!
2. **Recover:** LMMS will load the Autosave version of the last loaded project as a recover project! You need to use File > Save as and rename the recovery file to a name of your own choice! Do that immidiately!

Remember to save often! Save your project every time you've created something that sounds great. It's also a good strategy to save different versions of your song, allowing you to revert to a previous version of the project in the event that you've tweaked the production into something you don't like.

LMMS provides a special version control option for this in the File menu: *Save as new version*. Let's say your project was named as "MyProject", the new version will be named "MyProject-01", and the old file will not be altered.

When you save a project for the first time, you will be prompted for a folder and project name. You also have to choose if your project should be compressed (mmpz) or uncompressed (mmp). Subsequent saves will overwrite this file, and LMMS will show you a small message at the bottom of the screen.

{% hint style="warning" %}
Wait for the message, before you continue your work!
{% endhint %}