Losing Session Data

[eluser]derekmichaeljohnson[/eluser]
I have a 2 page registration process, and the data from the first page is stored in an array in the user's session data. To give you an example:

Code:

$pg1 = array(
  'name' => 'John',
  'email' => '[email protected]'
  // etc.
);
$this->session->set_userdata('registration',$pg1);

Then once they complete the second page, the data is merged with the first page and is processed.

All was well, until someone reported an error which was being caused by the data from the first page NOT being present at the time of processing. The details are sketchy, so I can't be certain how long they waited between pages, but I'm going to assume the session data expired.

Could this have something to do with CI refreshing the session information (set to 300 seconds)? The user definitely did NOT wait 2 hours to finish the second page, which is the time set for sessions to expire (in config.php).

Any ideas?