Where does Lion's autosave feature save past versions?

I just plugged in a USB stick, edited a text file a few times, and found that I could browse through the revision history of the file, even though it's on an external drive. Are these revisions saved on the USB stick? Where exactly?


Solution 1:

There are a couple SQLite databases located in a hidden folder on the root of your hard drive that are tasked with tracking the files and the differences between the versions.

The directory is:

  • /.DocumentRevisions-V100

The two databases are:

  • /.DocumentRevisions-V100/db-V1/db.sqlite
  • /.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStoreDatabase

Source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/14#versioning-internals