I'm using Q10 Home and Business and backing up to a USB drive. When I make a backup, it creates a new file instead of overwriting the old backup file which quickly fills up my USB drive. I then have to manually delete the old backup files to make room. How can I set it up to automatically overwrite the old backup?
I think you'll have to wait for a new release to come out; if I recall, the procedure is due to be changed in the release due in December.
In the meantime, you could just use Windows Explorer to copy your .QDF file to the appropriate backup folder.
Where did you see the information that "this procedure is due to change in the release due in December"? If they know the problem, why can they not fix it now? I just looked at my backup USB drive and had "tons" of backups on there.
Thanks for any insights!
Hi, John.
Why did Intuit make such a significant change with no notice to users?
As I have explained in past threads, my old habits die hard and I still make "voluntary" backups several times each day, IN ADDITION TO the automatic backups that Quicken makes. That was no problem when new backups overwrote the old ones. But now, in just two weeks with Q10, my voluntary backup folder already has 55 backups - at about 45 MB each - for a total of well over 2 GB!
It seems that, once again, Quicken's developers must be working with only their relatively small and static QDF model files and simply don't realize what happens out here in the real world.
Simply restoring the option to overwrite the previous file of the same name won't help, though. Q10 assigns each voluntary backup a NEW name, adding a serial number to each file. So my next backup will be QDATA-56.QDF-backup, and Q10 will not recognize that it is simply the later version of QDATA-55.QDF-backup, so it won't overwrite the previous file - unless Intuit's creative developers make the program smart enough to know that *56* is a backup of *55*. So far, I don't have that much confidence in those developers and programmers. :>(
I've not yet figured out the pattern on the automatic backups. Since installing Q10D on 10/20/09 to replace Q09D, my BACKUP folder now has five of those 45 MB backup files - with names like QDATA-03Nov2009-17-09-17.QDF-backup - created on 10/26, 10/28, 10/31, 11/02 and 11/03/09. My setting for "Back up after running Quicken" is set to 5 times; I think the default was 3 times. So I suppose that if I run Q10 only once per day, the automatic backups would be 5 days apart. But I often need to close and restart Quicken during a day, such as when I shut down the computer to run some errands, or when Windows Update requires a Restart. Since my setting is to keep a maximum of 5 backup copies, I suppose that explains why there are 5 files in BACKUP. Disk space usage now is different, but it adds up to about the same total amount - but the earliest automatic backup for me is only about a week old, not 5 weeks as it was in the previous system.
If you have a chance, John, please tell the developers that this was one part of Quicken that was NOT broken, so there was no need to fix it. Rolling the whole fileset into the QDF file may or may not have been a good idea; the jury is still out on that, I think. But messing up the backup system was totally unnecessary!
RC
Karen's Replicator works really well. I've been using it for several years to do my Quicken backup. It has plenty of options, so you can perform backups however you like. Best of all, it is free.
-- Jim
You might "sign onto" the discussion in the Quicken community forums .. "my quicken 2010 backs up the file with an extension i.e, file... then file...-1 etc. It also may put the date at the end of the file name" is the name of the thread. --
------------------------------------------------------------- Regards -
- Andrew
My first comment in the Live Community about this (shortly after Q2010 was released and as soon as I heard about the new backup policy) was that it was a mistake; so for what it's worth, I think Intuit knows I don't like it. I think I also mentioned my dissatisfaction here in a discussion with Margaret a while back. I'm guessing other users complained to Intuit, and that's why they've rethought the policy (assuming my memory isn't failing me).
As to why they did it; I'm only guessing, but one subject that gets tons of posts directly or indirectly, has to do with backups - and when a subject gets tons of public posts, it probably gets tons of tech-support "calls", which may lead to some of Intuit's decisions to change Quicken. Intuit may have thought that by insuring that if the user had to work to delete old backups, they'd be more likely to have a usable one available when they needed it. But - to the best of my knowledge, Intuit hasn't actually said why they changed this particular capability.
[They did say why they combined the various Quicken data files into one - 'cause users seemed to be "losing" some of those files - but I also think that was a mistake. Not sure they'll change their mind on this one though.]I hadn't even looked into the automatic backups; from what you're saying, they've changed that approach as well (and I don't just mean the dates in the names, though perhaps that's affecting other aspects). I thought the "once every 7 days" (depending on how frequently you ran Quicken) worked fine.
Hi, John.
With my usual impeccable timing, :^} in my "archives" I just stumbled onto the thread, "Backups not limiting as selected", started 5/19/06. The thread is more than a dozen posts long, with contributions by both you and me as well as several others. As usual, mine was the best and the most comprehensive (that means the longest, of course), so I'll copy'n'paste it here - after your post and Sig. Remember, this discussion was about the FORMER backup system, the one that persisted through Quicken 2009, NOT the one in Quicken 2010. Some of the same points that we made then are also discussed in the current thread.
RC
Yes RC, I do the same thing, and now I must manually clean out my daily backups folder a lot more often than I did with previous Quicken versions. Further, the naming convention of using alpha characters in the appended date wrecks any batch file. :-(
I'll be looking forward to Intuit's revision of this new backup system.
Regards,
Margaret
maybe they went to the "safest" mode of not auto deleting backups, along with the inclusion of the alpha-numeric backup date in the naming convention ?
Seems like a prudent way to create backups...
In my Q2209 R7 - adding the numeric date was a checkbox option on the Backup screen, created files -> QDATA22_20091014.QDF
So yeah, I can see how it's a major difference in Q10 from Q09
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