CD Backup

Seems like a waste of CDs/DVDs and burn time. I used to do my daily's to another hard drive, now I've switched to a 32MB thumb drive. I have 3 years worth of data, and my files are about 13MB, so plenty of room left. Quicken automatically keeps weekly backups (5 latest versions), and I do monthly backups to a 1GB thumb drive, giving each one a unique name. I pretty much can keep as many versions as I want.

Have you ever tried an actual recovery from your backup unit? Just curious what the question might be since you say you have multiple backups on one unit.

Guess I forgot to mention, I put each backup into a new subdirectory with the date as the name, ie \2006-12-30\. It helps if you create the subdirectory before you start up Quicken as the "Browse" in the Backup window doesn't allow you to create one.

I backup close to daily to a CD-R. It holds about one month. I use the option to append the date to the backup files. When the disk fills, I take it to the safety deposit at the bank, and start a new disk. It is easy, and I have multiple backups at a location that is safe, and away from my home. When the disks at the bank get to be too many, I bring some home, and put them through the shredder.

I have restored from backups on several occasions, and I've even gone back to prior disks. Luckily, I've never lost more than a small amount of data when the program decided that it didn't like the downloaded data.

FWIW that is exactly what I have done for years, too. Works extremely well.

Another "Me too." I backup every time I exit Q after making updates. I keep a daily backup file. Karen's replicator daily copies all backups to an external hard drive. I archive to CDR regularly.... I could actually restore back several years...

Regards, Hank Arnold

Is there a particular reason why you don't just use a dedicated CD-RW and overwrite the old data each time? (the old data will still be there, only there'll be new data with it). Or maybe use two CD-RWs and alternate them?

Port