Archiving Quicken files-- any purpose

Ray wrote in news:NImdnb4lwviErsrRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@atmc.coop:

You mean the year-end thing? That is so you (sort of only, I believe) discard old data into the year-end archive, and go on with only the more recent data.

At least that's what I think. I've never used it, because I want to be able to go back and see what happened in 1999.

Hi, Ray.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away...

I was an accountant. I kept books. BIG books! With pen and ink (remember those?). Each year's books for one company might weigh 10 pounds. A set of books for 20 years might outweigh me! To keep the physical labor of handling those books manageable, we would "close" the books each year-end. Then we would open a new, slimmer set of books for the new year. If we needed to look back in 1970 to see what had happened in 1965, we had to - first - FIND the 1965 binders, and then carry one from the vault to our desk, open it - then take it back and get the other binder, the right one, we hoped... You get the picture.

When I first started using Quicken - in 1990 - the situation was some better. But still, with those floppy diskettes and even with the humongous

5 MB (yep, M! B) HDDs, it often took a good bit of disk shuffling to find information from just a few years ago. Especially if we continued the pen-and-ink model of closing our electronic books each year and creating an annual archive, deleting prior years' data from our working file to make room for the new year's transactions.

Finally, as disk drives grew, we could store 20 years' data in a single file using only a tiny fraction of a hard disk. Nowadays, many (most?) of us Quicken users like to keep ALL our financial history in our current working file. My Quicken file has data back to 1990; its total size is a little over 50 MB now. That's, let's see, 1.6667e-4 of that 300 GB HDD. (I don't read scientific notation very well, but that's a very small fraction!) Even with a dozen backups, there's plenty of room. So I don't feel a strong urge to remove enough data from the file to save disk space. And, I don't notice any slowdown in performance, sp that doesn't motivate me to shrink the file, either.

What does motivate me - to keep the data intact and at hand - is the ability to look back and see that I paid $71.88 for the local phone company to install my telephone on November 13, 1990, including the first month's service.

I think I recall trying to archive the first year or two of my Quicken data, but haven't tried it since. I know the option is still there in the 2010 program (File | File Operations | Year-end Copy), but I have no interest in using it. But I don't mind if Intuit leaves it there for those who want it.

RC

I also like to keep all my data and have not archived, but it leads me to wonder if these are concerns:

a) Large files are more prone to corruption than small files. While it is true that backups add a layer of safety, one may not detect the data corruption until years later when all the backups are also corrupted.

b) I have 15 years data in Quicken and I have to say that in some of my busy investment accounts, things have become slow on opening them and especially on comparing downloaded transactions.

Anyone else noticed that?

(I am in Windows 7 64 with 6 G ram, but am not sure that Q is coded to use all the available ram).

c) With the rumors of Q becoming solely online, this may anyway be a moot question ........

Jeff

there is nothing anywhere in Quicken that states you gain anything except some file space .. in this day and age .. no more floppies.. so DVD-RW disks .. flash drives... and external hard drives are the norm.. seems like there is no worry about the file size anymore... looked to me like it was kinda useless...

I questioned this because a friend of a friend uses Archiving but has no idea why he uses it except that someone a while back told him to.. go figure..

I found this link.....a number of items in Quicken explained

as well as this

I've been using Quicken Backup to a DVD-RW disk for a while now... I also Backup to a 'My Quicken Backup' folder I created on one of my hard drives separate from the main Quicken folder.. as well as backing the entire Desktop up to an External Hard Drive

Unless something is broken, files are not prone to corruption at all. I used to write software for testing disk and tape storage. Disk storage is very reliable, and it has extensive error checking to insure that when a failure does occur, it can be detected, and often corrected. The errors that can't be corrected are usually severe enough that the data can't be used at all.

Most data corruption is caused by faulty software, or a defective disk drive (which is almost always completely destructive of the data). In both cases, file size has no bearing on it. But, even if it did, Quicken data files are certainly not large files. A single DVD image is at least

10 times the size of a quicken database.

If you are using USB thumb drives with no error detection or correction, then all bets are off.

-- Jim

And then if the house burns down you better have backed up to a HDD kept in a family members home or use one of the on-line storage services.

I believe you can never have enough backups of critical data. Hey...I wear and a belt and suspenders. 8>)

I think others have already noted that your understanding of "archiving" isn't correct. It's not backing up.

I suggest you ask to have someone demonstrate - *conclusively* - what the advantages of "archiving" are. I don't believe you will find any conclusive evidence that "archiving" is advantageous in the current world. Guestimates don't count.

Hi, John.

Right!

Backups are to make sure that what I saved yesterday is still usable today.

Archives are to make sure that I have a record of what happened two or ten years ago, in case I ever need or want that information.

Two different ideas for two different purposes. Both valid and valuable, but each for a different purpose.

What Ray originally asked about is kind of a hybrid of these two ideas: To remove obsolete data from the current operating files so that (a) we don't trip over it, and (b) so that it doesn't slow down or otherwise hinder current activities. This WAS a valid purpose when we were dealing with those large books that I mentioned. Those suckers got to be cumbersome! :^{ But Quicken on a reasonably modern computer is neither slow nor cumbersome, even with 20 years' data instantly available, for most of us. So I think that the practice of annually "closing the books" and removing last year's data is obsolete and unnecessary.

Note that I did NOT say that BACKUPS are unnecessary!

I also did not say that it is a bad idea to have some older backups/archives in safe storage. Maybe not necessary, but certainly not a bad idea.

RC

Once a quarter, I start a new DVD, and take my latest DVD to the safety deposit box at the bank. Worst case, if the house burned down would be data that is up to 3 months old.

Pretty much what I was saying.

I wrote programs to archive (and de-archive) data for my company many years ago. Not long after I wrote them, they became obsolete, as the capacity of hard drives and the speed of disk access became so great and the cost so low, that archiving no longer made any sense ... indeed, it added unnecessary delay and complexity to the access of old data.

That is good to know. I am using my PC's HD, but in a volume encrypted on the fly by True Crypt (which adds to complexity). I make regular backups to an external USB HD. Do not use flash drives for Quicken.

>

Not too sure about entrusting my financial data to the cloud. One never knows.....

>>

I look at it this way. All my financial institutions keep my data on a server in the "clouds". No way to get around that.

>>>

>>>

Yes but they have (hopefully) better security than these backup sites.

>>>>

>>>>

I agree totally.. none of my Personal or Important info do I keep on 'clouds' I go the backup to external hard drives.. multiples.. before I do the 'clouds'

Wanna bet?

I've been in IT for 36 years and am currently CIO at a rather large company. Go beyond the trade rag and consultant (I was one of them for 18 years, too) hype and you'll find companies are very cautious about moving all their data to mysterious "external clouds." Mine certainly is. Financial institutions and health care providers are even more at risk due to the sensitive information they must protect (I also worked for a major credit card company).

Besides security issues, you also have to deal with intellectual property concerns (especially outside the US - see UAE vs. RIM), what happens if the cloud co goes out of business, declares bancruptcy, or gets bought (will contracts be honored?), how to move data if you switch to another cloud co, etc., etc., etc.

There's also the time necessary to encrypt and transmit data to the "cloud." A DS3 connection (around $3k/mo) transmits at around 5.5 MBYTES/second. Moving 200 GB can take

10+ hours.

Several years ago I was CIO at a financial services company that outsourced our data center to a colocation facility. I was at the site one day when law enforcement arrived with a subpoena and hauled out a large shared disk storage array. Fortunately, my data wasn't on that device. However, there were several innocent companies whose data was pulled offline for a while and potentially compromised as the authorities searched the array. I immediately bought an array and moved my company data from the shared device we had been renting.

There are some advantages to clouds but it's not happening as fast as some would lead you to believe because they have something they want to sell.

sb

"D.Duck" wrote:

>>>

>>>

slb wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com:

AMEN!

In my mind, the "cloud" is still a newfound buzzword that could possibly live up to the hype its getting. But until it is proven to be something other than another method of separating users from their hard-earned money, I'll stay out of the clouds and remain in the realm of reality in the real world.

And they are?