Quicken 2006 Basic Backups Excess

I rhink you're confusing the automatic backups Q makes (that's what the '3' is) vs. ones you say you are backing up manually. Two seperate sets of backups. You can have Q backup to the same filename by unchecking the 'use date box' in the backup dialog if you'd like, and it'll just overlay the same one each time.

But, as I've said before, you can never have too many backups! Once a month I go into Windows explorer and delete all of them from 2 months prior. I'd rather have this 'hassle' than needing them at a critical point!

Thanks for your response. I guess it is not too much of a hassle to manually delete the high volume of backups that are created for all the times I update records in Quicken. I just thought it would be helpful if it would overwrite the previous backup on an external drive.

I'm a little confused. If your backups have the same name (as in QDATA, for example) each time, and you backup to the same folder each time; how could you NOT overwrite the previous backup?

Are you by chance having Quicken append the date to the backup file name (as in QDATA_20060217, for example)? If you do that, you can't help but get multiple backup files.

(Quicken's automatic backups are not created every time you use Quicken - unless you happen to wait at least seven days between each use of Quicken).

You are right. For the backup dialog, I had "Add date to the file name" checked, which caused continuous multiple file backups. Shortly after writing my previuos message, I unchecked this option and it merely overwrites the previous file (as I was wanting to do). Sorry about the confusion. I do understand the Automatic backup process.

Unrelated to this issue, I do not really understand the purpose of 4 different types of backup files that are created.

If you are talking about the QDATA.qdf, QDATA.qel, QDATA.qph, etc. files; those are not "different types of backup files"; those are all part of the same Quicken "fileset". The .qel file contains info about online accounts. the .qph file contains security price history, etc. It takes all those files to make one complete backup ... just as it takes all those files to comprise the file(set) you are backing up.

(And there can be more than 4 files, depending on what Quicken features you use - and we haven't even gotten to Home Inventory which is in a totally separate file, should you use Home Inventory).

I do use Home Inventory even though it has its limits for reporting. Thanks for explaining the backup fileset (QDATA.qdf, QDATA.qel, QDATA.qph etc. files). I really do appreciate your response.

"Quicken" backups do not backup your Home Inventory file, that occurs separately when you exit Home Inventory. And if you look for QDATA.* files, your Home Inventory file will (probably) not be there. The default name for your Home Inventory file is qhi.idb.