problem , Quicken backup , ext . drive

Hi, Bill.

You must be doing something wrong. I'm using Quicken 2008 now, but I've used most versions since about 1990. The only complication I've encountered was in burning CDs a few years ago. Now I use USB thumb drives and don't have any such problems anymore. In fact, I usually backup only to a separate internal drive daily and then to the USB drive every week or so.

As we've discussed here many times, Quicken provides for 3 kinds of backup:

1. Automatic backup - Every week, without even asking, Quicken backs up the entire fileset (the *.qdf file and related files) to the \BACKUP subfolder that it creates in the folder where your working fileset resides.

1. Reminded backup - Every 3rd time that you exit Quicken, it will remind you to backup to the location of YOUR CHOICE. The location is entirely up to you and you can change the default value to whatever number of exits makes you comfy.

2. Voluntary backup - As often as you like - even multiple times within a single session if you like - you can click Backup (or File | Backup, or press +B) and get the Backup screen where you can choose where to backup this time. If you like, you can make multiple backups to multiple locations, just by changing the destination folder name on the backup screen.

Click Edit | Preferences | Quicken Program | Backup to change the defaults for the first and second kinds of backup. Read it carefully because it's easy to misinterpret this screen. The first line is for what I've called #2, Reminded backups; this number is 3 by default, but you can change it if you are being reminded too often - or not often enough. The second line sets the number of automatic weekly backups (my #1) that Quicken makes; the default is 5, but you can change it. (The first weekly backup creates files QDATA1.QDF, QDATA1.QEL, etc. A week later, the QDATA1.* files are renamed QDATA2, then a new QDATA1 set is created. After the 6th week, the QDATA5 set is deleted before the 1-thru-4 sets are incremented. At any time after the 5th week, you should have 5 full sets of backups, numbered from 1 thru 5 and dated a week apart, all in the \BACKUP subfolder, in addition to any other backups that you may have created under my #2 or #3.)

Backups targeted at the CD worked well up to about 2002. But in 2003, as I recall, WinXP changed the behavior. Even though Quicken told us that the backup to CD was successful, that was not true. Quicken/WinXP had actually written our data to a folder ON THE HARD DISK, a holding area to be written to the CD later. Before we realized what was happening, many of us did not take the final step of forcing this data to be copied from that holding area to the CD, using Nero or Roxio or some other CD burning software. Later versions of Windows have smoothed this process somewhat, but too late for me - and for many other users, I think. As I said, I now skip the CD altogether in favor of the much easier-to-use USB thumb drive.

One problem with the USB drive is that the drive letter can shift from one use to the next unless we make the simple effort to pin it down. To do this, use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to (semi-)permanently assign a non-conflicting letter to the thumb drive so that it will get the same letter each time we plug it into the USB port. If you want it to always be T: (for Thumb) or U: (for USB), then assign that letter, rather than let DM assign the lowest available letter on each insertion. We also can right-click the disk in DM, then click Properties | Policies and select Optimize for quick removal (rather than Optimize for performance) so that the system will write our data to the thumb drive immediately, rather than cache the writes, and we don't have to worry about the Safely Remove Hardware setting; just "pull the plug" a second or two after the backup is done.

I've not used an external hard drive, but it seems to me that the backup procedure should work very much like it does with a thumb drive. If it doesn't, I hope another reader will jump in here and educate both of us.

RC

I'm not sure exactly what your problem is, but I do remember a problem with Q-2004. It was introduced at one of the patch levels. It would then only use Windows CD writing for backup. I uninstalled Quicken, then reinstalled, but did not let it install the later patch. That worked fine for a long time. Later, I upgraded to Q-2006, which also worked fine.

I've now upgraded to Q-2007, which also doesn't perform backups properly to CD drives. Now, I've installed "Karens Replicator" which I saw recommended here

It works great, and performs backups very nicely. I set it up to create dated folders for each backup, then copy the Quicken files into the dated folders. MY normal method is to back up to a CD each day, then when the CD fills, take it to my safe deposit at the bank, then start on a new CD. Each blank CD lasts about a month until it is full. I can't imagine anything that the Quicken backup could have done that would prevent you from backing up the files using some other method. I doubt that is what caused that problem, but there isn't enough information in your post to determine what went wrong there.

-Jim-

Jim,

This is somewhat off the specific topic of quicken backup, but since it's related to CD backup in general, and happening to show up, for me, when I back up Quicken, I'm taking the liberty to ask here.

I've recently upgraded my dinosaur from ME to XP and learned how to burn cds. With ME I was using an ancient version of EZ CD Creator to make my Quicken backups from 4 zip files which I rotated thru on a rather haphazard basis. EZ CD copied the 4 zip files, or any individual one that I updated, to my CDRW, with the same date that is on the hard drive copy. Now that I am using XP's builtin function, I notice that the file dates are the date of the burn, not the dates of the file, so that if I were to need to distinguish one file from another by just looking at the CD, I couldn't (well, I probably could, in that they just get bigger). Is this standard for the CD burner that comes with XP and does newer Roxio (or other) burning software "fix" this?

Thanks,

jo

I use the Roxio software instead of the XP burning software. The files are burned to the CD when they get written by the application, just as they were with the older EZCD Creator. The dates reflect that. The XP method of writing the files to a holding area on the disk, then burning them at some future date never did seem like a good way to go.

For Quicken, I've been using the option to add the date to the file names. This created unique file names for each backup. Now, with Karen's Replicator, I have it create a directory that includes the date in the name, then copy the files into that directory. I use CDR's, and take them to the bank when they are full. I used to use a single CDRW, but I've had them go bad, so that they could not be read. Having multiple backup copies, even if they are a little old seemed better than trusting one fragile plastic disk with all of my critical data. Buying blank CDR's by the spool makes them too cheap to worry about the cost.

-Jim-

Burned CDs do not last forever. So after a few years you should be reburning this old CDs if you still need the data on them. Keep these backup CDs in a cool dark place like your basement. Thanks, Jim