Why are BACKUPS stored on Internal HD?
macbero
Quicken Mac Subscription Member
I'm baffled that Quicken2020 Mac stores the BACKUP folders on my internal HD. I find that very troubling because if anything happens to that intenal HD...there go my BACKUPS! But also, they are stored buried in the LIBRARY/APPLICATION SUPPORT/BACKUPS. UGH. This App is so very PC and so not MAC. Why can't I store my BACKUP on an EXTERNAL HD? When I did try to do that I got some message that the data file was missing. (?) Please, someone help me make another BACKUP to an EXTERNAL HD for practical reasons. I feel I need this especially due tot he fact that when I upgraded to Quicken 2020 it would NOT import any of my ESSENTIAL files and I lost 10 years of financials. Even after contacting support they were no help in retrieving any files, even from multiple backup copies I had.
Any help appreciated to do a BACKUP COPY on an external HD!
Thank you :-)
Any help appreciated to do a BACKUP COPY on an external HD!
Thank you :-)
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Best Answer
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@macbero I remember you posted about your problems trying to access your Quicken Essentials backups, and I don't know what about your setup made that no work, but many thousands of users did successfully move from Essentials to Quicken Mac using their live and backup Essentials files. So there must have been something unique about your Essentials files or the drive(s) they were stored on which cause your difficulty.
And many, many Quicken Mac users successfully, regularly open a Quicken backup file to solve any number of problems. So there's nothing wrong with the basic set-up or architecture of Quicken Mac backups that you should need to worry about. (That said, it's not a bad idea to try to open a backup file every now and then, just to make sure the backups you think you have actually do work. Testing backups is a key aspect of having backups that many users don't think or remember to test until it's too late.)So… back to your problem with automatic backups not working. What is the formatting of the external drive? APFS? HFS+ (Journaled-Extended)? Something else?
If you can successfully save a manual backup to a folder on the external drive, I can't think of any reason why you can't set the automatic backups to go there as well. I also haven't seen any other reports of people having problems with automated backups like this.
In your preferences, do you have both checkboxes checked, like this:
If not, check them both, and make sure when you click Backup Folder, it shows your selected backup folder on the external drive. If you then quit Quicken -- after having made some change to the data file (e.g. create a new transaction, then delete it) -- do you get the dialog box asking if you want your file backed up, like this:
And after you click Back Up, do you briefly see the Status box saying it's backing Up Quicken box, like this:
I'm guessing you're going to say you don't get one or more of those steps to happen? I'm just trying to understand where it fails.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19935
Answers
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Backups can be stored wherever you want them. Simply go to Preferences > General and click the Backup Folder button to set your preferred destination for backup files.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930
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jacobs...THANKS for this but it doesn't work. I've changed the BACKUP location using PREFERENCES as you suggested and I get nothing :-(0
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It does work in general. I've moved mine to a different location; some people back up to external drives and even to cloud services.
What happens when you select a folder on your external drive? Do you get any error message? How is your external hard drive formatted? If you change to another location on your internal drive, does it work? What version of macOS are you running? There's something about your set-up that is causing whatever problem you're encountering, so it's just a matter of hunting it down.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
I successfully get the PREFERENCES dialog box to change the SAVE location and I select the External HD where I want the backup to go. But when I check the folder for the BACKUP file on the external HD there's nothing in it. The External HD is a RAID drive where I'm also saving the Quicken file. I don't want to have a BACKUP on my INTERNAL HD. So even if that worked, it wouldn''t be of any use.
(I'm guess the issue is that I upgraded by a freak accident to MAC OS CATALINA , which was a BIG mistake.)
The only way to get a BACKUP to save to a folder on the External HD is to save it FILE>MAKE A BACKUP> (selected Backup Folder on External HD). As long as this method works, I'll use this. But it seems a safer bet to just have the BACKUP file created automatically when I quit Quicken, the way its designed to work :-)
I'm also very concerned that Quicken2020 could not open ANY other backup files I had tried to open that were created from Quicken Essentials. So I have a fear it could also have issues opening it's own Q2020 Backups.
I find it frustrating that Q2020 does give you the option to import and/or open QE files and the all you get is an empty register file. I lost 10 years of financial data because of this issue. Q2020 tech support was of no help and blamed it on the 32-bit vs 64-bit difference between the two Mac OS's I was using. If Q2020 won't open a QE file THAT should not even be an option in the dialog box.
Thanks for your help. If you have any other ideas to do the auto backup on the EHD I'm all ears :-)0 -
@macbero I remember you posted about your problems trying to access your Quicken Essentials backups, and I don't know what about your setup made that no work, but many thousands of users did successfully move from Essentials to Quicken Mac using their live and backup Essentials files. So there must have been something unique about your Essentials files or the drive(s) they were stored on which cause your difficulty.
And many, many Quicken Mac users successfully, regularly open a Quicken backup file to solve any number of problems. So there's nothing wrong with the basic set-up or architecture of Quicken Mac backups that you should need to worry about. (That said, it's not a bad idea to try to open a backup file every now and then, just to make sure the backups you think you have actually do work. Testing backups is a key aspect of having backups that many users don't think or remember to test until it's too late.)So… back to your problem with automatic backups not working. What is the formatting of the external drive? APFS? HFS+ (Journaled-Extended)? Something else?
If you can successfully save a manual backup to a folder on the external drive, I can't think of any reason why you can't set the automatic backups to go there as well. I also haven't seen any other reports of people having problems with automated backups like this.
In your preferences, do you have both checkboxes checked, like this:
If not, check them both, and make sure when you click Backup Folder, it shows your selected backup folder on the external drive. If you then quit Quicken -- after having made some change to the data file (e.g. create a new transaction, then delete it) -- do you get the dialog box asking if you want your file backed up, like this:
And after you click Back Up, do you briefly see the Status box saying it's backing Up Quicken box, like this:
I'm guessing you're going to say you don't get one or more of those steps to happen? I'm just trying to understand where it fails.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19935
This discussion has been closed.