Quicken 2011 Backup

Ken Blake wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Hi Ken: I don't know what the problem is. What operating system? Any other things happening? I'm asking because I use an encryption scheme on my Win7 Pro laptop for my Quicken datafiles and other sensitives, and sometimes my machine goes awry in the sense that after shutting down and restarting everything remotely connected with Windows Explorer is slowed down to intolerable crawl. So far the only thing that helps is shutting down and leaving the machine totally unplugged and sans battery overnight. I am suspecting that incorrect dismounting in Truecrypt is the problem, but I'm not sure yet.

Apart from that, I am so far successful in backing up to an external network hard drive, to a portion mapped as drive Z. Noproblems with that.

Hope this helps somewhat ...

Hi, Ken.

But your current working file is still good, right? How about the latest automatic backup (in the Quicken\BACKUP folder)?

If I understand correctly, your "manual" backup was apparently successful, but now that backup file cannot be opened? The failure is in copying from the apparently-good backup to a thumb drive or other storage? The error message is not about writing to the storage, but about opening the existing file?

Sounds like you should concentrate on that "separate folder on [your] hard drive". Either the glitch was in writing the backup there, or in trying to read it from there. Even if you didn't get an error message on the Save (or Save As), there may have been a glitch in the write. (There's always the chance of a bad sector on the disk, but those are pretty rare these days.) Can you successfully make (and recover) a manual backup to another location?

You are running Win7 64-bit Ultimate, right?

RC

-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 R 8 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

My standard procedure, done every three days from within Quicken 2011, is to back up the Quicken data file to a separate folder on my hard drive, then copy the backup to external media.

Today, the backup failed with the message "Unable to open source file." Anyone know what might be wrong and how to fix it?

Hi, RC, and thanks for your thoughts on the problem.

Right.

I don't do automatic backups.

No. Sorry, I've confused you. The problem is trying to create a backup within Quicken. I can copy an existing backup to the thumb drive, and what I did after sending the message was shut down Quicken and manually create a backup by copying the Qdata.qdf file from \Quicken Data to the folder I use for backup, and then copy that backup file to a thumb drive.

Doing the above is essentially the same as doing it within Quicken; it's just slightly more complicated and takes a bit longer.

It's about creating the backup file. It says it can't open the source file (qdata.qdf), but obviously it can, since it does that every time I start Quicken.

Right.

"Ken Blake" wrote

Unless you've manually modified the Quicken .ini file, I don't see how you could avoid doing automatic backups.

Have you looked in the "BACKUP" folder in the folder where your Quicken data resides? Simple way to see the contents of that folder when your Quicken data file is open:

Edit > Preferences > Backup > (Open backup directory)

Of course not. Quicken does them for you. That?s why they are called "automatic". ;^}

Note that Q2011 now puts much longer names on its automatic backup files. Rather than simply QDATA1.QDF, it now is something like QDATA-2011-09-18.PM04.32.QDF-backup.

And it will ALWAYS (unless you've taken some pains to change it) be in the BACKUP subfolder in the folder where your main (QDATA.QDF) file resides. In my slightly unorthodox arrangement, that is E:\QuickenW\BACKUP. (It's easy to goof up and put them into QuickenW\BACKUP\BACKUP.) Another recent (2010?) change is that the backups no longer happen once a week, starting a week after Quicken is installed. Now the automatic backups are done after every 5 (by default) times that Quicken is run. As before, you can change these settings at Edit | Preferences | Backup. You can set the frequency to as seldom as every 99 times, but you can't change it to zero without changing Quicken itself (so far as I know).

In addition to these automatic backups, which Quicken makes without even asking me, I also do "manual" backups several times a day, such as after I download transactions or stock prices, most days. These go to a different folder on the same HDD (not a recommended arrangement, but that's what I use), and I have a .bat file that moves them to a thumb drive for storage in my safe. I SAY that I do this weekly, but you know how forgetful I am. ;^{

RC

-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 R 8 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

Hi, RC, and thanks for your thoughts on the problem.

Right.

I don't do automatic backups.

No. Sorry, I've confused you. The problem is trying to create a backup within Quicken. I can copy an existing backup to the thumb drive, and what I did after sending the message was shut down Quicken and manually create a backup by copying the Qdata.qdf file from \Quicken Data to the folder I use for backup, and then copy that backup file to a thumb drive.

Doing the above is essentially the same as doing it within Quicken; it's just slightly more complicated and takes a bit longer.

It's about creating the backup file. It says it can't open the source file (qdata.qdf), but obviously it can, since it does that every time I start Quicken.

Right.

I caught a glimpse of Ken Blake on Tue, 20 Sep 2011

I had the same experience with Quicken 2011 last Month (Australian) and couldn't solve it, so I think it is a fault within Quicken.

My Quicken started up and ran as usual but I was unable to create backups to my hard drive or external media. I also had MS Money which retained my data which was handy.

I eventually uninstalled Quicken and did a new install which fixed the problem. :-)

Ken, I suggest you copy your backup data to different folders as I was able to, in the eventuality you need to uninstall Quicken and having to reinstall.

Thanks to you and John. I'm replying to both of you, in what follows below.

Perhaps I'm wrong--you know Quicken much better than I do--but I don't think so. Two points:

1. The only backup file in the location you specify below and with the file name you cite is XQDATA-2010-02-07.PM12.48.QDF-backup. Notice the date--February 2010.
2. When you go to Edit | Preferences | Setup | Backup, yes, there are places to set the number of backup copies (1-99) and how frequently to do automatic backups (1-99). But note that there is also a check box to turn the Automatic Backup feature on. I don't have it checked because my system does its own automatic backups (of everything) every night, using Windows Home Server.

Over and above my WHS backups, I also do backups to thumb drives (actually to the hard drive, then I copy them to the thumb drive) every three days. I use two thumb drives and alternate between them.

It's that backup to the hard drive, before the copy to the thumb drive, that had failed and I was asking about. However I just tried it again, and to my great surprise, it worked normally this time--presumably because I had booted since the time I asked the question.

My backup process is similar but I make sure the backup file is copied to a thumb drive or a CD and stored in my safe deposit box at my bank, from time to time (once a month or so). This would protect my files in case my house burned or some such. Gordon

Hi, Ken.

The screen at Edit | Preferences | Backup has changed since I last looked carefully. I looked yesterday, but overlooked a point or two. Yes, I'm still running Q2011 Deluxe Revision R 8 (20.1.8.6) - the latest, so far as I know.

First, I hadn't noticed that check box in front of "Automatic Backups". I don't think it was there before; Automatic Backups were always just...automatic. The box is checked, but I don't remember checking it.

That line ends with a link, "Open backup directory". I fully expected that to show me my E:\QuickenW\BACKUP folder - but it didn't! Instead, there was a pop-up window that said: "The backup directory has not been created yet. It will be created when the file is backed up automatically the first time."

WHAAAT? That folder was created at least a decade ago, and it has my latest automatic backup, dated 9/18/2011, plus 9 earlier backups for a total of

When I click the link to "About backup options", the second bullet point says: "Makes a historical copy of your data every fifth time you open Quicken and stores five of these copies in the Quicken/BACKUP folder."

Note that this line says "Quicken/BACKUP", not "QuickenW"; that "W" has been a part of the foldername ever since Quicken For Windows took over from the MSDOS version about 20 years ago, of course. Does the current Quicken Setup drop the "W" for new installations? (And the forward slash should be a backward slash, of course; makes me wonder if the writer uses Windows very much.)

So my smug little world has been shaken up! I thought I understood Quicken's automatic backup scheme, but it seems to have changed under my desktop without my realizing it. I see that Erik has reported a similar problem with the Australian version of Quicken. Maybe John can explain it to both/all of us.

RC

-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 R 8 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

Thanks to you and John. I'm replying to both of you, in what follows below.

Perhaps I'm wrong--you know Quicken much better than I do--but I don't think so. Two points:

1. The only backup file in the location you specify below and with the file name you cite is XQDATA-2010-02-07.PM12.48.QDF-backup. Notice the date--February 2010.
2. When you go to Edit | Preferences | Setup | Backup, yes, there are places to set the number of backup copies (1-99) and how frequently to do automatic backups (1-99). But note that there is also a check box to turn the Automatic Backup feature on. I don't have it checked because my system does its own automatic backups (of everything) every night, using Windows Home Server.

Over and above my WHS backups, I also do backups to thumb drives (actually to the hard drive, then I copy them to the thumb drive) every three days. I use two thumb drives and alternate between them.

It's that backup to the hard drive, before the copy to the thumb drive, that had failed and I was asking about. However I just tried it again, and to my great surprise, it worked normally this time--presumably because I had booted since the time I asked the question.

I'm also using Quicken 2011 DLX, save update level as you.

I just went through the same exercise as you, but found different results.

Namely, my "automatic" backup directory is still called "QUICKENW\BACKUP" and the backup directory contains 5 backups, made about 5 days apart from one another, as I'd expect.

Quicken itself is also installed in "QUICKENW", not in "Program Files\..."

All of this is probably a result of my having been updating Quicken for years, so everything is just going in the same directories as the original installation.

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3.

I don't do it as often as you do, but I give my son a backup CD a couple of times a year.

OK, no big deal. This was probably the first time I ever knew something about Quicken that you didn't (and will probably also be the last time) ;-)

No W here.

Perhaps it because you have the W in the folder name.

Sigh. A terrible error!

Programs accessing files via the Windows API can use either forward or back slashes as separators. Maybe the person writing the document was the same person who wrote the software.

We had a house fire about 9 years ago. Fortunately, it didn't destroy my computer, but I would have been in a mess had the fire spread to that part of the house.

A squirrel got into the powerline hot wires just outside our garage. The burning squirrel in a strong northeast wind sent it falling onto our wood shingled roof and started an inferno. Fortunately the fire department responded very quickly and got the fire under control. Only the garage and one upstairs bedroom were damaged.

But that woke me up concerning the NEED to keep a very recent copy of all my tax and accounting files elsewhere. I use my bank safe deposit box for this.

Gordon

Hi RC,

Since John hasn't responded yet, let me describe what I know. I'll let John confirm, correct or expand my explanation if he so chooses.

The BACKUP directory is created in the same folder as your QDF file. To the best of my knowledge this is not user-tunable.

Multiple QDF files in the same directory share the same BACKUP folder. QDF files in separate folders use separate BACKUP folders. The QDF file can be kept in any folder that has the appropriate access permissions; the rightmost component of that folder name is arbitrary, i.e. it need not be either "Quicken" or "QuickenW".

In the past the QDF file [set] was kept, at least by default, in the same folder as the Quicken program files. The rightmost component of the [default] Quicken installation folder was "Quicken" when I started using Q98 but I suspect it may have been "QuickenW" when you started [to distinguish it from the coexisting DOS version]. Looks like you may have retained your QDF files in a "QuickenW" folder even after the default Quicken installation folder changed to "Quicken."

FWIW my BACKUP folder has 5 Q10 backup files plus 5 Q08 backup file *sets* that [understandably] Quicken never deleted for me when I installed Q10.

I first noticed the Automatic Backups check box in Q10 and I suspect, but can't confirm, that it was added as part of the redesign of the backup mechanism for that version.

The "Open Backup Directory" link is new for Q11. It works fine for me [Windows 7 HP SP1, Q11 H&B R8].

My QDF file and its BACKUP folder are in C:\Users\Jerry\My Documents\Quicken. I copied my QDF file, but not its BACKUP folder, to C:\QuickenW, opened the copy, and got the same popup error message you got when I clicked the "Open Backup Directory" link. When I closed the copy an automatic backup was made in the newly-created C:\QuickenW\BACKUP folder. Reopening the QDF copy and clicking the "Open Backup Directory" link correctly located the newly-created BACKUP folder.

Don't know what your problem is RC, but it doesn't appear to be the "W" at the end of the folder name nor its location directly under the root directory for your file system. You might try renaming the BACKUP folder, letting Quicken create a new one, and seeing if "Open Backup Directory" can find that one. If that doesn't work, try renaming your QuickenW directory, creating a new one, copying your Quicken files [but not the BACKUP directory] to your new QuickenW directory, then opening that QDF copy. Sometimes Windows, application program bugs or malware mess up access permissions and recreating affected folders and/or files clears up mysterious problems.

Other than the above I'm out of ideas.

Jerry

Ken Blake" wrote

1. When you go to Edit | Preferences | Setup | Backup, yes, there are places to set the number of backup copies (1-99) and how frequently to do automatic backups (1-99). But note that there is also a check box to turn the Automatic Backup feature on. I don't have it checked because my system does its own automatic backups (of everything) every night, using Windows Home Server.

------------------------------------

My apologies, I totally forgot this option was present. It was added starting with Q2010: I never use it and I just forgot it was there.

No problem. I use it for three reasons:

1. Backup to the hard drive is better than nothing, but is the weakest form of backup there is; it very easy for a single problem to simultaneously wipe out both the original and the backup.
2. Having two other levels of external backup, I don't need it.
3. I keep Quicken running all the time and reboot very infrequently--typically once every week or two. So automatic backups would be created very seldom.