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Curious about backups

Quicken 2007 deluxe

In Edit | Preferences | Backup, I set Quicken to save five sets. In the Program Files | Quicken | Backup folder, here's what I find:

For my personal files: account PERS, there are seven sets of backups, each containing a set of four files with extensions .IDX, .QDF, .QEL, and .QBH. Each has the filename CORPYYYYMMDD, and the dates include six earlier dates plus today's (which I backed up as a test)

But in addition, there's another five sets of backup files as follows: CORP1 CORP2 CORP3 CORP4 CORP5

Each of these sets has four files with the same extensions as above, but the creation dates are different.

Which is the real set? Why the two file naming conventions.

I seem to recall setting a preference to add the backup date to the filename, but can no longer find the setting in preferences. Possibly from an earlier Quicken?

Suggestions welcome.

Reply to
PT
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Quicken backups are initiated in two different ways: the user clicks File > Backup; or Quicken initiates one of its "automatic" backups (done when you exit Quicken) at 7 day intervals, or as close to that as it can.

The backups initiated by the user have a default name the same as the file being backed up and they are the ones that have the option to append the backup date to the backup file name. The number of these backups is limited only by your backup file housekeeping rules ... you could end up with hundreds of these backups if you don't prune them regularly.

The backups Quicken initiates are the ones with the single digit suffix added to the name of the file being backed up. You elected to have Quicken keep 5 (automatic) backups, so your Quicken automatic backup file names ranged from CORP1 thru CORP5. Quicken always puts its backups in the folder named BACKUP, in the folder where the file being backed up resides. You can never have more than 9 of these for any given Quicken file(set).

The different naming conventions prevent a backup initiated by one means from interferring with a backup initiated by the other means.

All those backups are equally valid.

Reply to
John Pollard

Reply to
Stubby

That option only controls how often you will be reminded to initiate your own backup; it's not related to Quicken's automatic backups. When the reminder appears, you must still start the backup yourself; if you ignore the reminder, no backup is done.

Reply to
John Pollard

Hi, Stubby.

You may be confusing automatic backups with what I call "reminded backups".

On the Edit | Preferences | Quicken Program | Backup screen, the first question is about how often Quicken should REMIND us to do "manual" backups. We can set this to 1 and then Q will remind us to do a manual backup after every session. We can put this backup on our flash disk or to a second physical hard disk or to a different folder on our main disk - or just about anywhere we like (even to a SD card in a USB card reader, just like we do with pictures from our digital camera). Note that this "preference" option says "remind"; it does not actually make a backup without further real-time instructions from us.

But no matter what number we use for this first question, it does not change Quicken's habit of making its own "automatic" backup every week, starting with the day we install (or re-install) Quicken. These automatic backups always go to the \BACKUP subfolder under the folder that holds our working data file (as John Pollard explained - and as both John and I have spelled out many times here). So far as I know, there's no way for us mere mortals to change this "automatic" behavior (either the timing or the file location). We would have to get out our scalpels and do significant surgery to the Quicken program itself, not just its user-accessible settings.

RC

Reply to
R. C. White

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