|
Posted by R. C. White on January 2, 2007, 12:31 pm
Please log in for more thread options Hi, Pat.
> How does one know that a file is corrupted?
Well, I don't know any single answer to that question. If the file won't
load, or if I suddenly am worth a billion dollars, then something is wrong,
obviously! But if the corruption is more subtle, I might not realize it for
a long time - years, even. And I may have dozens of backups, all created
since the corruption happened and all similarly corrupted.
Fortunately, I haven't had any Quicken file corruption in several years (so
far as I know!). In the earlier years, using MS-DOS and DOS-based Windows
(Win3.x, Win9x) and FATx file systems, corruption was not unusual. I
haven't Validated my Quicken file since about January 2004, so far as I can
tell. That doesn't mean that I haven't made mistakes, of course. Just none
that made me worry that my fileset was corrupted.
Perhaps John Pollard has a more definitive answer for both of us.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista Ultimate x64)
> Thanks RC for a very informative response.
>
> Perhaps you can answer this question. How does one know that a file is
> corrupted? After several hours of work by a skilled and gifted support
> agent at Schwab, he said that my file is corrupt. I begged to differ with
> him because the resolution of my problem did not set well with me. After
> much deliberation, I went back to one of my backup files and began
> replicating in it the changes he had made. The file seems to work well.
> Thanks,
> Pat
>> Hi, Pat.
>>
>> This is one of the most-often-discussed issues in this newsgroup,
>> especially around the end of each year.
>>
>> The short answer is that most of us agree that backups are great, but
>> archiving is not needed and will reduce the usefulness of Quicken.
>>
>> Backups, especially at "milestone" points, such as the end of each year,
>> are excellent ideas. In addition to the regular weekly backups which
>> Quicken makes automatically, plus the "manual" backups that Q reminds us
>> to do frequently, it is a great idea to have a backup of your data as of
>> last year-end, and that it is on removable media of some kind that can be
>> stored separately from your computer in case of fire, theft or other
>> disaster.
>>
>> But most of us see little good in removing historic data from our Quicken
>> data fileset. Yes, it makes the file smaller so that it takes up less
>> disk space. Many feel that it makes Q load faster, but nobody has ever
>> proven that, so far as I know, or even quantified it here. We often
>> discuss the size of our various Q data filesets, and many are larger and
>> go back further than yours. I've been using Quicken since 1990 and my
>> fileset (the .qdf plus .idx, .qph and 4 others) totals just over 30 MB.
>> On a 120 GB hard drive, even multiple backups of that size are not a
>> great burden. Others have reported larger files than that without any
>> problems in loading or using Quicken.
>>
>> The beauty of this is that I can load Q2007 Basic and get a report of my
>> income and/or expenses for 1992 or 2002 as easily and quickly as for
>> 2006. If I need to recall when I bought that computer printer that went
>> bad, to see if it is out of warranty, it takes me only seconds. I don't
>> have to recall which year it might have happened, then find that year's
>> archive, load it, read it -- and then go look for the years before and
>> after until I find the right one. (And trying to find a 5.25" floppy
>> disk drive to read my old 1990 archive?)
>>
>>> I am raising this question because I have been told that files will
>>> corrupt after several years of use.
>>
>> Yes, we often hear that users "have been told" this, anonymously, of
>> course, but our own experience tells us otherwise. Yes, corruption was
>> certainly a problem a dozen years ago. Floppy diskettes were notorious
>> and early 20 MB hard drives were not much better. I still click Backup
>> several times in each Quicken session, a habit that goes back to the time
>> when spontaneous resets and other computer glitches left me looking at a
>> rebooting computer and having to re-enter an hour's work, not just in Q
>> but in Word and any other application I might have been using. Today's
>> computers, though, including the hard drives (and the NTFS file system)
>> are so reliable that such a situation rarely occurs. File corruption is
>> not inevitable, though, and like anything else, the likelihood increases
>> with time and use. That's why we keep the several levels of backup
>> mentioned above. But I doubt that archiving would provide any additional
>> security against corruption.
>>
>> When you have time, Pat, review the archives of this newsgroup and you
>> will see this question raised and answered many times.
>>
>> RC
>>
>>>I have never performed Year-end archiving of my Quicken data. I am
>>>unclear as which data will carry forward and which will not. That's
>>>followed by how do I access data that is not carried forward. From the
>>>help topic: "Archive your data file if you want to continue using an
>>>unchanged version of your current data file, and also create and store a
>>>separate file with just last year's transactions." Since I have never
>>>archived, will Quicken now create separate archive files of each year's
>>>data, or will it create one file of all data excepting the rule in the
>>>quote?
>>> I am raising this question because I have been told that files will
>>> corrupt after several years of use. My file goes way back, perhaps 10
>>> or more years. So, I am concerned that something drastic is just around
>>> the corner. I backup my file habitually. Are the backed up files subject
>>> to corruption, too? What can be done if a file corrupts? My file has
>>> been validated and super validated recently.
>>> Scratching my head and sitting on pins and needles,
>>> Pat
| 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap