Alternate Hard Disk drive

The message is saying that you need to use packet-writing software like InCD or Direct CD. I don't recommend doing this because these backups should be completely transferrable. If you try to transfer the data to another computer that doesn't have the same packet-writing software installed (or doesn't have a UDF reader), the CD-RW you carefully made will look blank.

It is better to just use a CD-R. Make a folder for your Quicken backups in My Documents and set that as the default backup location. This way you can back up your whole My Documents folder at one time, including the Quicken backup.

Malke

1. Create the backup files on the hard drive, use a new empty folder to make sure you get them all.
2. Copy the folder to the CD writer drive.

1. Open the CD drive in Windows explorer. You should see dimmed icons for eash file. Select "Write these files to CD".

Windows XP has built in CD writing software. You don't need anything special. If the above doesn't work, maybe you don't really have a CD burner. You can buy a 512MB USB key chain drive for under $20-30 as an alternative, assuming you have USB in both systems.

Thank you for your response. I modified your suggestion a bit and would like to insure that I am on safe ground.

I made a Quicken Backup folder in My documents on the C drive. I did a Quicken Backup into this new folder. I made a new Quicken Backup folder on the CD-RW. Using Windows Explorer I then copied the backup files from My Documents to the new folder on the CD-RW. This seemed to work OK. Because I sometimes must backup Quicken several times a day I prefer to use a few CD-RWs and keep cycling them by overlaying the data on the oldest CD-RW. Am I on solid ground with this method? Once I am sure I have a working Backup strategy I will then move on to the Recover process.

Malke wrote:

It means that Quicken (and many other applications) expect the CD-RW drive to be using packet writing so the disc looks like a big floppy. You need to use CD-RW media, not CD-R. The IMAPI service in Windows XP is NOT packet writing software. You will need to get InCD or DirectCD which are installable file systems that add UDF read/write support to CD-RW drives (for packet writing). Those programs come from Roxio and Nero and are bundled with their CD burning software. I haven't bothered to check if there are freebie UDF writers around (there are freebie UDF

*readers* but that won't let you write to the disc). Either Quicken figures its users are too stupid to understand the details (by providing any) in their help or they really don't know what it is required.

I've never cared for the installable UDF drivers provided by InCD and DirectCD since they reduce reliability of every host on which they have been installed (i.e., I will get more blue screen crashes on them and which are specifically tied to these utilities). You might simply designate a backup folder on the hard drive and then copy that folder to the CD-R[W] disc using IMAPI (drag using Explorer) or CD burning software.

If you backup that often I would suggest getting a scheduled backup utility. Cobian Backup is free and excellent. For safety's sake you could add a second hard drive, either in box or on the network, to the backup regimen. This set up would work independently of Quicken's own backup faculty.

p.

The Cdrw has to be under a UDF filesystem monitoring program like INCD for the backup to work directly within the Quicken program. This is not suggested in my opinion for a single and only backup system for your financial files.

Some alternatives as well are a separate hard drive, an external hard drive, a thumb drive, networked connected hard drive. Multiple targets are best for critical personal file backups.

My personal view is that CDRWs are much less reliable than CDRs, and I always use CDRs instead. CDRs are very cheap these days; you can often buy them for pennies, and sometimes they are even free after rebate.

Another approach, and the one I use for backing up my Quicken data, is to back up to USB thumb drives.