Copying Files

Doug Dubowski

When you copy a Quiken file, it comes out slightly smaller than the original. Does anybody know why and is there any impact as a result? I lost about 500KB on a 110MB file when I copied it.

YingDave

I haven't worried about doing that. It's not worth the time for the amount of storage you gain. It doesn't grow uncontrollably as I am not constantly deleting much from the file. However on an email archive file in outlook - different story, receiving/deleting all the time. It automatically cleans itself up, and you can trigger it manually. For the Quicken file a non-issue really.

Studpup

It doesn't seem to grow much, I experimented with file that hadn't been copied in years, and it shrunk a tiny amount, but grew that much after one step updates and using the file for a few days.

It's way more important in my opinion to backup frequently (I auto backup after every use, keep the past 99) and validate maybe weekly, just in case something goes wrong, you can roll back to a known working file thats only a few days old. I copy my good validated file to dropbox in case of house fire or encryption malware, etc.

YingDave

Because when you delete accounts, memorised transactions etc. in your file, they are not actually deleted they are just marked as deleted. Copying the file over probably rewrites the data into new file without some of those redundant records. Same thing happens on many database type files, eg. MS Outlook mail archive etc. 500k on 110MB is not really that much less than half a percent.

Doug Dubowski

So is it a good idea to periodically copy a file to eliminate this "deleted entries" to improve performance, say once a year?

YingDave

I haven't worried about doing that. It's not worth the time for the amount of storage you gain. It doesn't grow uncontrollably as I am not constantly deleting much from the file. However on an email archive file in outlook - different story, receiving/deleting all the time. It automatically cleans itself up, and you can trigger it manually. For the Quicken file a non-issue really.

Studpup

It doesn't seem to grow much, I experimented with file that hadn't been copied in years, and it shrunk a tiny amount, but grew that much after one step updates and using the file for a few days.

It's way more important in my opinion to backup frequently (I auto backup after every use, keep the past 99) and validate maybe weekly, just in case something goes wrong, you can roll back to a known working file thats only a few days old. I copy my good validated file to dropbox in case of house fire or encryption malware, etc.