QW 2011 Backup

Hi, Ken - and John.

Ken's Reply arrived before John's question! Looks to me like at least one of you needs to check his computer clock! ;

QW 2011 hangs up when I try to backup to a thumb drive. Any ideas?

JPC

Probably.

I have Q 12, and I just tried it with thumb drives formatted as FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. All worked. They took a long time, and the first time I was starting to worry; I have a 49MB QDF file. If your file is large be sure you are not mistaking a slow backup for a 'hang.' I'm not certain I ever used a thum drive with Q 11 but I have used them extensively in the past with earlier versions without problems.

I assume you have tested the thumb drive and can write to it with other software. You can also format (NOT Quick) the drive to check for bad blocks.

Using Quicken 2013, I backup to my hard drive, then immediately copy the backup to a thumb drive. I don't know whether direct backup to a thumb drive works, but I prefer what I do because it gives me an extra level of backup.

The software on an EXTERNAL hard drive I have attached to my system AUTOMATICALLY backs up various files (onto the external HD) including everything in "My Documents" WHENEVER the system is idle for 5 minutes. This is in addition to the backup that I have set up to occur EVERY TIME that I close the Quicken program (onto INTERNAL hard drive).

If one is really paranoid (like I am), I also back up to a RW DVD each month and store it in my safe deposit box. Yes, having two external drives is good (I too use Nero software to take automatic data backups), but that doesn't mitigate any possible power surge issues that wipe out BOTH drives, or fire/floods/other environmentals that might hit your physical abode.

(I read once that one's safe deposit box should be SEVERAL miles away from your home, not just at the closest bank. If a wide-spread failure occurs, one might have 'issues' at both one's house as well as the bank building.)

I'm with you almost entirely. For backup to be reliable, it needs to be not only on external media, but on external media not permanently connected to the computer. And even better is storing that external media off-site.

Andrew, we seem to folow same policy. Problem in South Florida near ocean i s that bank branches are at street level and subject to flooding in case of severe storm surge during a major hurricane. Still, I take my monthly back ups (copied from my external mirrored drive), from a high above dondo unit to the bank. A cloud solution might also work, but I don't like cloud conce pt and so am "stuck" with present arrangement. Oh well.... - P.S. I also d o a total systems backup periodically...