Am I the only user who doesn't save their Quicken file on the C: drive??

RedSatinDress

First off, it's great that Quicken regularly gets updates & improvement. However, I have an almost religious obsession about NOT saving files on my C:\ or on someone else's cloud. I have my own private, offline server that's LAN accessible from any computer in the house. Instead of Quicken keeping track of the location of my last used file, it apparently saves the name of my file but not the fully qualified path and searches only my C:\ drive and not surprisingly can never find my file. Of course I don't expect or want Quicken to search ALL my drives, but why can't it save its location as well?

Is this a change that they're working on or considering? - And if not, is there some way for me to request/suggest this simple change??

GeoffG

You are not required to save the Q data file to C:, however it does need to be local and cannot be on a NAS. You can move the Documents folder to whichever local drive you have and Quicken will always find it under Documents\Quicken.

I've had Quicken files on the D drive for years without issue and recently moved to G without issue.

Rocket J Squirrel

Maybe you are the only one.

As a test, I copied my data file to my NAS and ran it from there. It worked fine. Subsequent Quicken runs opened the NAS file, not the C: file. Quicken even created a BACKUP subfolder on my NAS to store its automatic backup file (although its modification time looks strange; it's picked up the timestamp from the enclosing folder). So I don't think your problem is as simple as you describe.

Quicken keeps plenty of configuration and log files on C:. If you are preventing Quicken from putting them where it wants them, you'll have issues.

But working with Quicken data across my 1 GB LAN is so slow I would never do it. Maybe I need a NAS faster than the WD MyCloud. Plus, this configuration is just begging for data corruption. See screen shot; P: is mapped to the Public share on my NAS.

RedSatinDress

OMG! I'm so sorry! ... What I meant to say was that it always finds my last used file EXCEPT WHEN IT'S JUST INSTALLED A NEW, UPDATE VERSION OF QUICKEN!! That's why I started out by saying I'm glad for all the improvements in Quicken. Sometimes my brain doesn't quite seem to register my wording!

Rocket J Squirrel

Good thing I'm sheltering in place with my computers to keep me company. (Oh yeah, wife & dog are here, too.)

I'm a Quicken tester, so I have more versions of Quicken lying around than you can shake a stick at. I just installed a new version over my old version and it still found my data file on my NAS just fine. Boy, it's slow, though.

Are you allowing Q to write to %APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, C:\ProgramData, etc. on all your PCs? It needs to do that. If you're blocking Quicken via Controlled Folder Access, that's a problem. The next time Q can't find your NAS file, look at %APPDATA%\Quicken\config\QUSER.INI. Your preferred data file should be #1 on the RecentFiles list.

Rocket J Squirrel

But I'll reiterate, it's still a bad idea to run Q over a network. Its old pre-network-era software expects to be accessing a local drive. Q can corrupt its own data even when the data's on C: so imagine what network latency might contribute.

RedSatinDress

OK, I got another update & the problem repeated. I've thought about this some more, & now I'm wondering if it's because my Quicken file is password protected and perhaps the error message is just standing in for any generic "open file" issue. However, unlike if I just click on my Quicken file to open it, I'm never shown the text box that would allow me to actually open the file.

As to latency issues, I have a rather "serious" network server (Synology) with mirrored Raid-1 drives that's scalable & used commercially in businesses & has far more capabilities than I'll ever understand. Since I'm usually on an ethernet connection as well I don't notice any latency issues myself. Again, maybe the password protection on my file allows the file to get buffered while I'm entering the password.

The first screen shot displays the error message; the second screen shot shows the file I've been using on the hard drive. (I don't use Window's file manager, I prefer Directory Opus.)

Sherlock

I suggest you copy the data file to a folder on a local drive and use short (8.3) names.

RedSatinDress

Clearly this NOT the issue since unless Quicken is updating it's able to remember my file name & its location and it opens up my file just fine.

NotACPA

Spaces in the full path and file names that aren't in 8.3 format don't cause problems immediately ... but they eventually ALWAYS cause problems.

You are, naturally, free to do as you wish ... but consider this (and Sherlock's message) to be warnings.

Also, Q lacks the "Lock", "Commit" and "RollBack" commands that are needed to operate in a networked environment.

SO, don't be surprised at some point in the future, when you discover that your Q data file is TOAST!

Sherlock

RedSatinDress said:

Clearly this NOT the issue since unless Quicken is updating it's able to remember my file name & its location and it opens up my file just fine.

Unless you're opening the file directly, Quicken obtains the file to open from the [RecentFiles] in the QUSER.INI file maintained in the user's hidden AppData\Roaming\Quicken\config folder.  The Window's APIs as used by Quicken to access the file are not reliable for files that are not local and using short (8.3) names.

You may certainly continue to access your data file over a network but you are risking non-repairable data corruption.

GeoffG

NotACPA said:

SO, don't be surprised at some point in the future, when you discover that your Q data file is TOAST!

As well as every backup going back however far to find no corruption.

thecreator

Hi @RedSatinDress ,

I have partitioned Hard Drives on all computers. My Documents folder is located on a completely separated partition, so I can simply restore the operating system, without losing any information.  I:\My Documents\Quicken 2020 Data

However, when I do Manual Backups, they go to My Mapped Hard Drive:

Z:\Quicken Backup

It is simple and I do a Manual Backups prior to closing Quicken, when I make changes to the Data File. I have Automatic Backups, turned off.

RedSatinDress

Decades ago I used to partition my hard drive to isolate the OS, but finally Windows 10 rewrote their abysmal software so that reinstalling it “only” wipes out all your software, thus obviating the need to set up partitions, which absolutely wont protect you from a computer or hard drive failure.

I always manually back up Quicken upon each exit and manually log which computer has the most recent backup on it, separately backed up to different folders based on day of week. My server also automatically gets backed up to multiple external hard drives every night.

The question was really why can’t Quicken find my data file whenever it updates the program, otherwise it works just fine.

thecreator

Nope!

If I need to reformat and reinstall Windows 10, using  the ISO Image burned to DVD, I can do it real easy.

Boot the Computer using the DVD and Windows loads. Then you get Install Windows. On the next screen, you can choose to upgrade or to Install Custom. With Custom, you get to choose the partition to install the operating system into.

I had to do it several times.

It can't find the Data File, if located on your NAS Mapped Hard Drive, because the Mapped Hard Drive, does not always get connected to the operating system on starting up.

You need to load File Explorer before starting up Quicken. Make sure that all Mapped Hard Drives are connected, before you Start up Quicken.

RedSatinDress

My file manager (Directory Opus) automatically is set to start up at boot time, and since my server has "Wake on Lan" turned on as well, access to my server - and mapped drives - is always in place.

And again, this can't bear repeating often enough - THIS ONLY HAPPENS WHENEVER QUICKEN UPDATES IT PROGRAM!!

Greg_the_Geek

@RedSatinDress You can yell as much as you like but your problem will never be addressed since you're using Quicken in an unsupported configuration. As @NotACPA posted, Quicken lacks the "Lock", "Commit" and "RollBack" commands that are needed to operate in a networked environment.