Back Up - HELP

I have completely messed up my backups. When I go to Quicken (2006 Premier) and Open, I see a long list of backups in there. Last year I only saw the main backup and the others were in another folder - how do I correct this and what am I doing wrong? The backups seems to be in Doc& Settings/myname/mydoc/quicken/backup/backup. Thanks so much!

Reply to
Terri
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Your primary (working) file should be in Doc& Settings/myname/mydoc/quicken. and there should be a subfolder called Backup. It sounds like your working file was moved to the backup folder. As a result, the next backup process created another backup folder.

You need to determine move your current working file and get it back to the main quicken folder. The easiest method would be use the file option to copy the working folder into the main quicken folder. Next time you use the Open option make sure you open the one in the main quicken folder and not one from the backup folder.

Reply to
Laura

One thing you're doing wrong is "open"ing backup files. [This is clear because you are seeing backup file names in Quicken's most recently used file list, and because you have a "BACKUP" folder within a "BACKUP" folder: those folders are created by Quicken, in the folder where the current Quicken file is open ... so you had a file open in "BACKUP", then Quicken created another BACKUP folder, beneath the first one, for its automatic backups.]

If you need to revert to a backup (to replace your current file with a backup), you should "restore" the backup.

If you need to view the contents of a backup, you should make a Windows "copy" of the backup fileset (there are several files that comprise a single Quicken file), and open the copy. I would treat the "copy" as a throw away; after you've looked, you can delete it (and the BACKUP folder that might get created when you open the copy).

The backup files in the BACKUP folder (the backups created automatically by Quicken), are created every seven days or so (depending on how often you use Quicken).

You should probably backup every time you use Quicken, though you do not necessarily need to put that backup on offline media.

One simple approach to creating a backup everytime you use Quicken is to create your own backup folder with seven sub-folders named for each day of the week. Just before you exist Quicken, do a backup to the appropriately named day-of-the-week folder. Then you will have backups for the last

7 days of Quicken use, supported by Quicken's weekly automatic backups (I keep 5 so am guaranteed at least one month's worth of them.)

You can decide how frequently to make offline backups (which can be done outside Quicken); you should need to use those offline backups much less frequently than the backups on your hard drive.

Reply to
John Pollard

Reply to
Terri

I think you can put it anywhere ... and definitely somewhere you won't get confused. I have mine beneath the root folder [D:\Backup\Quicken]

Reply to
John Pollard

You don't keep it on the C drive but differentiating it?

Reply to
Terri

You don't keep it on the C drive but differentiating it?

Reply to
Terri

"Terri" wrote

Please Terri, PLEASE.......keep the same subject and quote a tiny part for continuity....please?? That would be the REPLY GROUP button in your newsreader client. ;-)

Reply to
Ken Abrams

My D drive is my main Windows XP hard drive partition. All my applications and data are on my D drive.

Reply to
John Pollard

WTF?

Reply to
Andrew

Just for a different approach...

I leave a backup CD-R in my CD writer. Each day, I use "Karen's Replicator" (free software) to copy the Quicken files into a dated directory on the CD. The program automatically creates the directory, and copies the files. A CD lasts about a month before filling up. I write the date on the CD with a Sharpie, and take it to the bank. There, I keep them in my safe deposit box with other valuables. Every so often, I remove the old ones and destroy them.

If my hard drive fails, or I get a computer virus, or even if there is a fire in the house, I have a recent backup available in a safe place. I've never had a fire or a computer virus, but I have had hard drives fail. They all do eventually.

I also had a quicken problem, and the only way to convince Intuit support that it wasn't corrupted data was when I loaded data from several months earlier, and still had a failure.

I'd suggest that it should depend on how much your Quicken data is worth to you. To me, it is worth much more than the computer, and definitely more than the cost of 12 CDs per year.

Reply to
JimH

Yet another method, similar, is to buy a cheap USB-connectable hard drive and use that as the object of your backups. I keep 3 months of daily backups automatically created across ALL my data daily using Nero backups (NOT compressing the files). If I need to move my stuff to a new computer, I can simply unplug the hard drive and reconnect the USB cable to another PC.

I , like you, also once a month back up to a DVD for off-site storage in case my system gets fried.

Reply to
Andrew

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