Archiving Quicken files-- any purpose
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From: Ray on 2 Aug 2010 17:05 a long time Quicken user --just some personal accounts... nothing elaborate... .. just wanted to know what is the purpose of Archiving Quicken Data files... I backup on a weekly basis or when needed.. can't see the need for it... am I missing something.. thanx :)
From: Han on 2 Aug 2010 17:41 Ray <nospam(a)aol.com> wrote in news:NImdnb4lwviErsrRnZ2dnUVZ_h2dnZ2d(a)atmc.coop: > a long time Quicken user --just some personal accounts... nothing > elaborate... > > .. just wanted to know what is the purpose of Archiving Quicken Data > files... > I backup on a weekly basis or when needed.. can't see the need for > it... am I missing something.. thanx :) You mean the year-end thing? That is so you (sort of only, I believe) discard old data into the year-end archive, and go on with only the more recent data. At least that's what I think. I've never used it, because I want to be able to go back and see what happened in 1999. -- Best regards Han email address is invalid
From: R. C. White on 2 Aug 2010 18:26 Hi, Ray. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away... I was an accountant. I kept books. BIG books! With pen and ink (remember those?). Each year's books for one company might weigh 10 pounds. A set of books for 20 years might outweigh me! To keep the physical labor of handling those books manageable, we would "close" the books each year-end. Then we would open a new, slimmer set of books for the new year. If we needed to look back in 1970 to see what had happened in 1965, we had to - first - FIND the 1965 binders, and then carry one from the vault to our desk, open it - then take it back and get the other binder, the right one, we hoped... You get the picture. When I first started using Quicken - in 1990 - the situation was some better. But still, with those floppy diskettes and even with the humongous 5 MB (yep, M! B) HDDs, it often took a good bit of disk shuffling to find information from just a few years ago. Especially if we continued the pen-and-ink model of closing our electronic books each year and creating an annual archive, deleting prior years' data from our working file to make room for the new year's transactions. Finally, as disk drives grew, we could store 20 years' data in a single file using only a tiny fraction of a hard disk. Nowadays, many (most?) of us Quicken users like to keep ALL our financial history in our current working file. My Quicken file has data back to 1990; its total size is a little over 50 MB now. That's, let's see, 1.6667e-4 of that 300 GB HDD. (I don't read scientific notation very well, but that's a very small fraction!) Even with a dozen backups, there's plenty of room. So I don't feel a strong urge to remove enough data from the file to save disk space. And, I don't notice any slowdown in performance, sp that doesn't motivate me to shrink the file, either. What does motivate me - to keep the data intact and at hand - is the ability to look back and see that I paid $71.88 for the local phone company to install my telephone on November 13, 1990, including the first month's service. I think I recall trying to archive the first year or two of my Quicken data, but haven't tried it since. I know the option is still there in the 2010 program (File | File Operations | Year-end Copy), but I have no interest in using it. But I don't mind if Intuit leaves it there for those who want it. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) rc(a)grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (Using Quicken Deluxe 2010 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64) "Ray" wrote in message news:NImdnb4lwviErsrRnZ2dnUVZ_h2dnZ2d(a)atmc.coop... a long time Quicken user --just some personal accounts... nothing elaborate... .. just wanted to know what is the purpose of Archiving Quicken Data files... I backup on a weekly basis or when needed.. can't see the need for it... am I missing something.. thanx :)
From: Jeff on 2 Aug 2010 18:53 On 8/2/2010 6:26 PM, R. C. White wrote: > Hi, Ray. > > Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away... > > I was an accountant. I kept books. BIG books! With pen and ink (remember > those?). Each year's books for one company might weigh 10 pounds. A set > of books for 20 years might outweigh me! To keep the physical labor of > handling those books manageable, we would "close" the books each > year-end. Then we would open a new, slimmer set of books for the new > year. If we needed to look back in 1970 to see what had happened in > 1965, we had to - first - FIND the 1965 binders, and then carry one from > the vault to our desk, open it - then take it back and get the other > binder, the right one, we hoped... You get the picture. > > When I first started using Quicken - in 1990 - the situation was some > better. But still, with those floppy diskettes and even with the > humongous 5 MB (yep, M! B) HDDs, it often took a good bit of disk > shuffling to find information from just a few years ago. Especially if > we continued the pen-and-ink model of closing our electronic books each > year and creating an annual archive, deleting prior years' data from our > working file to make room for the new year's transactions. > > Finally, as disk drives grew, we could store 20 years' data in a single > file using only a tiny fraction of a hard disk. Nowadays, many (most?) > of us Quicken users like to keep ALL our financial history in our > current working file. My Quicken file has data back to 1990; its total > size is a little over 50 MB now. That's, let's see, 1.6667e-4 of that > 300 GB HDD. (I don't read scientific notation very well, but that's a > very small fraction!) Even with a dozen backups, there's plenty of room. > So I don't feel a strong urge to remove enough data from the file to > save disk space. And, I don't notice any slowdown in performance, sp > that doesn't motivate me to shrink the file, either. > > What does motivate me - to keep the data intact and at hand - is the > ability to look back and see that I paid $71.88 for the local phone > company to install my telephone on November 13, 1990, including the > first month's service. > > I think I recall trying to archive the first year or two of my Quicken > data, but haven't tried it since. I know the option is still there in > the 2010 program (File | File Operations | Year-end Copy), but I have no > interest in using it. But I don't mind if Intuit leaves it there for > those who want it. > > RC I also like to keep all my data and have not archived, but it leads me to wonder if these are concerns: a) Large files are more prone to corruption than small files. While it is true that backups add a layer of safety, one may not detect the data corruption until years later when all the backups are also corrupted. b) I have 15 years data in Quicken and I have to say that in some of my busy investment accounts, things have become slow on opening them and especially on comparing downloaded transactions. Anyone else noticed that? (I am in Windows 7 64 with 6 G ram, but am not sure that Q is coded to use all the available ram). c) With the rumors of Q becoming solely online, this may anyway be a moot question ........ Jeff
From: Ray on 2 Aug 2010 19:14
On 8/2/2010 6:26 PM, R. C. White wrote: > Hi, Ray. > > Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away... > > I was an accountant. I kept books. BIG books! With pen and ink (remember > those?). Each year's books for one company might weigh 10 pounds. A set of books > for 20 years might outweigh me! To keep the physical labor of handling those > books manageable, we would "close" the books each year-end. Then we would open a > new, slimmer set of books for the new year. If we needed to look back in 1970 to > see what had happened in 1965, we had to - first - FIND the 1965 binders, and > then carry one from the vault to our desk, open it - then take it back and get > the other binder, the right one, we hoped... You get the picture. > > When I first started using Quicken - in 1990 - the situation was some better. > But still, with those floppy diskettes and even with the humongous 5 MB (yep, M! > B) HDDs, it often took a good bit of disk shuffling to find information from > just a few years ago. Especially if we continued the pen-and-ink model of > closing our electronic books each year and creating an annual archive, deleting > prior years' data from our working file to make room for the new year's > transactions. > > Finally, as disk drives grew, we could store 20 years' data in a single file > using only a tiny fraction of a hard disk. Nowadays, many (most?) of us Quicken > users like to keep ALL our financial history in our current working file. My > Quicken file has data back to 1990; its total size is a little over 50 MB now. > That's, let's see, 1.6667e-4 of that 300 GB HDD. (I don't read scientific > notation very well, but that's a very small fraction!) Even with a dozen > backups, there's plenty of room. So I don't feel a strong urge to remove enough > data from the file to save disk space. And, I don't notice any slowdown in > performance, sp that doesn't motivate me to shrink the file, either. > > What does motivate me - to keep the data intact and at hand - is the ability to > look back and see that I paid $71.88 for the local phone company to install my > telephone on November 13, 1990, including the first month's service. > > I think I recall trying to archive the first year or two of my Quicken data, but > haven't tried it since. I know the option is still there in the 2010 program > (File | File Operations | Year-end Copy), but I have no interest in using it. > But I don't mind if Intuit leaves it there for those who want it. > > RC there is nothing anywhere in Quicken that states you gain anything except some file space .. in this day and age .. no more floppies.. so DVD-RW disks .. flash drives... and external hard drives are the norm.. seems like there is no worry about the file size anymore... looked to me like it was kinda useless... I questioned this because a friend of a friend uses Archiving but has no idea why he uses it except that someone a while back told him to.. go figure.. I found this link.....a number of items in Quicken explained http://financialsoft.about.com/od/quickenforbeginners/tp/Work-With-Quicken-Data-Files.htm as well as this http://financialsoft.about.com/od/advancedtutorialsandtips/ss/q04_archive.htm I've been using Quicken Backup to a DVD-RW disk for a while now... I also Backup to a 'My Quicken Backup' folder I created on one of my hard drives separate from the main Quicken folder.. as well as backing the entire Desktop up to an External Hard Drive |