|
Posted by Jeff on June 5, 2007, 2:55 pm
Please log in for more thread options No problem, I know we are all just trying to help each other and I
appreciate that. Absolutely no offense taken.
Since I first started using Quicken I have never done a year end
procedure (whatever that entails) because - as you've mentioned - the
advice on this newsgroup is to not bother with it. Now it is presenting
a practical problem of Quicken taking very long to process accepting
each individual downloaded sale transaction I tell it to accept. Not a
theoretical problem but a practical and real one of time involved.
Because I have never reduced the Q file sizes I have no experience and
am not sure what the recommended procedure for reducing file size is:
archiving, year-end procedure, or whatever and how irreversible (loss of
access) these procedures are.
Thanks for your help.
Jeff
R. C. White wrote:
> Hi, Jeff.
>
> Sorry about the "you haven't told us" crack. I reread your message
> after typing that, but forgot to delete it. :^{
>
> Thanks for the fuller explanation of your slowdown. I understand your
> concern now. But I probably can't help with it, so I'll step back
> and let John Pollard and others with downloading experience give you
> some tips.
> RC
>
>> Hi RC
>>
>>> You haven't told us how big is "large enough" to cause a slowdown on
>>> your "poor PC", which you also haven't described for us.
>>
>> There is only so much info one should let loose on the web.
>>
>> My *.qdf file is over 30 MB large. The other sizes have already
>> given out. My PC is a Toshiba notebook with a Intel duo CPU T2050
>> running at 1.6GHz and 2 G ram running Windows XP MCE.
>>
>> I do realize the advantages of having everything on one file, but in
>> my case and on my PC - which is not as fast as yours - there has
>> become a noticeable slowdown affecting my handling of downloads -
>> something you may not have noticed because you do not use downloads.
>> I too do not use the Quicken Tax planner.
>>
>> It is not the Quicken opening file speed or the download speed that
>> is too slow - although that is certainly not lightening fast. In my
>> case, it is whenever I have to "accept" each individual downloaded
>> transaction that is the main problem. When you accept a downloaded
>> transaction, Quicken goes through the files checking where that
>> equity was purchased or sold, how many are left or whatever - and
>> the hourglass stays on while the hard drive light churns away till
>> it finally lets me finally go on to the next downloaded transaction
>> waiting for me to accept. This is what has begun taking much longer
>> lately because there are so many accumulated thousands upon
>> thousands of transactions for Q to sift through and compare.
>> Incidentally I have several separate investment accounts and in some
>> there is much more investment transaction activities that others. I
>> know - for a fact - that these busy accounts take much longer to
>> even open than my more calm investment accounts. In some of my busy
>> ones it can take as long as 2 minutes (!) as opposed to a few
>> seconds on the less busy ones. So, after a point, size does matter.
>> Any database manager would tell you that stating the reverse is just
>> illogical. And adds to the risk of corruption which is further
>> aggravated in my case because I use an encrypted drive which is why
>> I have frequent backups to external drives. So, in my case, because I
>> have numerous transactions and accounts, it
>> takes me "hours" (couple of days) to go through my monthly
>> transaction downloads each month - much longer than I recall it
>> using to take when these files were smaller.
>>
>> So my questions are:
>> 1. "How" does one archive only from a certain date (say 5 years) in
>> the past?
>> 2. How easily are these archives accessed, if ever necessary?
>> 3. Do they have to be re-imported into the current file?
>> 4. Any specific problems (other than loss of access to data on that
>> TV you purchased 12 years ago) caused by eliminating transactions
>> prior to a certain date.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> R. C. White wrote:
>>> Hi, Jeff.
>>>
>>>> So I would like to reduce the size of my Q files to speed up
>>>> operations.
>>>
>>> You may not yet have read the MANY messages here that discuss the
>>> size of our Quicken files and ask "how big is too big?" Our
>>> near-unanimous conclusion is that big files do not slow Quicken down
>>> noticeably, and the ability to instantly recall years-old data far
>>> outweighs any benefits that might be gained from removing old
>>> transactions from the file.
>>> You haven't told us how big is "large enough" to cause a slowdown on
>>> your "poor PC", which you also haven't described for us. For
>>> reference, I've been running Quicken since 1990 and now run Quicken
>>> 2007 Basic on Vista Ultimate x64 with 2 GB of RAM and over 600 GB of
>>> storage on 4 SATA hard drives. (My system has evolved over the
>>> decades; it wasn't this strong until last December.) My *.qdf file
>>> is 25 MB, .qel is only 48 KB (I don't download transactions), .qph
>>> is nearly 3 MB (that's the historical price file for about 30
>>> securities), and my .qtx file (for income tax stuff) is 4,276 bytes
>>> and hasn't changed since 2004, which was probably the last time I
>>> tried to use the tax planner. My total fileset (what Quicken refers
>>> to collectively as a single file) is just about 30 MB. It's not
>>> quite as large as your fileset, but response is as quick - much
>>> quicker, in fact - than back in the Windows 98 days, when files were
>>> smaller and hardware was slower.
>>> My recommendation is to be sure that you have a good BACKUP
>>> strategy, including plenty of hard drive and other storage space,
>>> then just let the fileset grow. Then if you need to remember where
>>> you bought that humongous 24" TV set back in the early '90s, just
>>> scroll back in your check register. You don't have to go searching
>>> FOR, and then loading, and then searching IN the 1993 file, then
>>> 1992, or was it 1991? ;<) RC
>>>
>>>> Running Quicken Deluxe 2006 in Windows XP.
>>>>
>>>> My Quicken data files are getting large enough that they are
>>>> causing a significant slowdown in Quicken's operations whenever it
>>>> need to
>>>> accept a downloaded transaction on my poor PC. It does not help
>>>> that I keep my Quicken data files in an encrypted folder on my PC
>>>> which probably adds time to the processing.
>>>>
>>>> So I would like to reduce the size of my Q files to speed up
>>>> operations. I have data that goes back many years and I would like
>>>> to archive some of these years with the ability to access them
>>>> again - on the rare 276 chance I would need them again. How do I
>>>> go about doing that? BTW, what are the QEL and QPH files which
>>>> alone measure over 10 and
>>>> 7 MB respectively in addition to the main data file of 35 MB?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> Jeff
| 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap