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Quicken is slow to start on my computer using data files in encrypted vault.

Mark Hartry

I using Quicken Starter Edition, version R35.31, build 27.1.35.31, on a Windows 10 Pro laptop. I'm using OneDrive and have my Quicken data files in a vault encrypted using Cryptomator. The file path is K:\Financial\Quicken.

With the vault unlocked, starting Quicken always takes 2 to 3 minutes to start. Eventually it opens up to my data file. Once started, Quicken runs normally with no issues.

I've noticed that when Quicken updates, the update process always creates a Quicken folder in my Documents folder and I've gotten accustomed to having to go to my data file and using Quicken to open it. Trying to open the file from Quicken doesn't work because Quicken doesn't see the virtual drive created by Cryptomator.

I'm using Cryptomator to protect the files stored on OneDrive, which is setup to keep files on the computer as well as in the cloud. The Personal Vault in OneDrive only allows for cloud storage, which is why I'm not using that option.

Is this something I'll have to live with or is there something that can be done to speed up Quicken starting up? I've already tried uninstalling/reinstalling Quicken. The same version of Quicken is installed on my wife's PC using the default settings and has no issues (thankfully!) which is why I know Quicken is having issues with using a virtual drive on mine.

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Sherlock

Mark Hartry said:

@splasher: You said you use Veracrypt, which I'm familiar with. Cryptomator works the same way and so does Boxcryptor. Cryptomator is a little more convenient to use than Boxcryptor, which is why I'm using it. OneDrive has a personal vault but it does not allow for the storage of files on the hard drive, cloud only.
@sherlock Prior to using the Cryptomator program, I had, and still have, my Documents folder backed up to OneDrive. Files are on my computer as well as the cloud and Quicken had no problem as long files were in the Documents folder. OneDrive doesn't update files until after they are closed.

I thank everyone for their time and inputs. I was curious as to why Quicken was acting the way it is and if there was anything that could be done. I have two laptops, a Dell 17" and a HP 15", that are setup the same way. When using the HP, Quicken opens slightly faster than it does on the Dell. Sometime in the future, I'll do a clean install of Windows on one of them and see what happens.

If you've been accessing the Quicken file in a folder actively maintained by OneDrive and have not had any problems, you may have been lucky. You may still discover the Quicken file has a non-recoverable corruption you just haven't detected yet. Note: Various Quicken program operations temporarily release the file lock which unintentionally allows other programs to access the file with unpredictable consequences.

All comments

Sherlock

I suggest using Quicken to access the Quicken file in a folder on an internal drive and insure no other processes may access the Quicken file when you open Quicken. There are a few ways you may achieve this while maintaining the Quicken file in the Cryptomator vault. For example, you may copy the Quicken file from the vault before you open it in Quicken and, when you close the file, you may copy it back to the vault. You may want to consider implementing a script for the purpose. Here's one a user contributed for using a shared network drive: FAQ: Using Quicken when you want to keep your data file on a server

Chris_QPW

Note that one could change that script to use move instead of copy on the copy back so that the data file isn't left on the unscripted drive.

Mark Hartry

I have OneDrive setup to keep my files on my hard drive on my computer as well as on the Microsoft servers as part of my computer backup plan. Even when not connected to the internet, all my files are still accessible, including my Cryptomator vault. I've added a screenshot of how my computer is setup.
The K:\ drive is a virtual drive of the unencrypted files and functions the same way as my C:\ and other drives.
Quicken just seems to take a long time to follow the path to the K:\ drive.

splasher

I use Veracrypt on my local hard drive with no slow down but I don't use OneDrive.

What happens if you move the vault file to a folder that is not monitored by OneDrive?

What happens if you don't use Cryptomatorand move the Q data file to a regular, non-OneDrive folder on the local hard drive?

You need to one by one eliminate the differences between your setup and the default Quicken setup of having the file in the Documents/Quicken folder to see what is causing the delay at startup.

Mark Hartry

If Quicken is setup to use the default files in my Documents folder, it works with no delays even with the Documents folder being in the OneDrive folder. There are other files in the Cryptomator vault and other programs, such as Word, have no problem accessing them.
It appears Quicken by default ignores virtual drives because after an update, when I go to File>Find Quicken Data Files, Quicken doesn't see the K:\ drive at all. I have to go to the K:\ drive, locate the Quicken Data File, right click on it and select "Open with Quicken". After that, once Quicken knows the file path, it will open that file when starting Quicken after a 2-3 minute delay while Quicken starts.
Quicken is consistent in acting this way to the point that when I start the computer, it is the first program I start after the computer has finished the startup program if I'm planning on using it later.
I know Cryptomator is the hang up, I just don't know why.

Sherlock

Mark Hartry said:

I have OneDrive setup to keep my files on my hard drive on my computer as well as on the Microsoft servers as part of my computer backup plan. Even when not connected to the internet, all my files are still accessible, including my Cryptomator vault. I've added a screenshot of how my computer is setup.
The K:\ drive is a virtual drive of the unencrypted files and functions the same way as my C:\ and other drives.
Quicken just seems to take a long time to follow the path to the K:\ drive.

Which is why I suggested you not use Quicken to access the Quicken file on the path to the K:\ drive.

Also, Quicken does not play well with OneDrive (or Google Drive, DropBox, MegaSync, etc.). Which is why I suggest you access the Quicken file in a folder on an internal drive not maintained by OneDrive. Alternately, you could suspend OneDrive while using Quicken or configure OneDrive to exclude the Quicken file.

splasher

Mark Hartry said:

…
It appears Quicken by default ignores virtual drives because after an update, when I go to File>Find Quicken Data Files, Quicken doesn't see the K:\ drive at all. I have to go to the K:\ drive, locate the Quicken Data File, right click on it and select "Open with Quicken". After that, once Quicken knows the file path, it will open that file when starting Quicken after a 2-3 minute delay while Quicken starts.
…
I know Cryptomator is the hang up, I just don't know why.

I know Quicken does not have an issue with seeing or finding the virtual drives that VeraCrypt creates, so as you state in your closing sentence, "Crytomator is the hang up", so why not get rid of it and use a different data vault process? Several of the A/V companies have them built in as an option and there are definitely other third party programs out there.

Sherlock

splasher said:

Mark Hartry said:

…
It appears Quicken by default ignores virtual drives because after an update, when I go to File>Find Quicken Data Files, Quicken doesn't see the K:\ drive at all. I have to go to the K:\ drive, locate the Quicken Data File, right click on it and select "Open with Quicken". After that, once Quicken knows the file path, it will open that file when starting Quicken after a 2-3 minute delay while Quicken starts.
…
I know Cryptomator is the hang up, I just don't know why.

I know Quicken does not have an issue with seeing or finding the virtual drives that VeraCrypt creates, so as you state in your closing sentence, "Crytomator is the hang up", so why not get rid of it and use a different data vault process? Several of the A/V companies have them built in as an option and there are definitely other third party programs out there.

The primary difference between Cryptomator and VeraCrypt is that VeraCrypt uses a single container. Cryptomator encrypts each file individually which makes it slower but a better match for synching using a cloud storage provider.

Just consider, every Quicken file change Quicken flushes to disk requires Cryptomator to encrypt the entire Quicken file archive again.

Mark Hartry

@splasher: You said you use Veracrypt, which I'm familiar with. Cryptomator works the same way and so does Boxcryptor. Cryptomator is a little more convenient to use than Boxcryptor, which is why I'm using it. OneDrive has a personal vault but it does not allow for the storage of files on the hard drive, cloud only.
@sherlock Prior to using the Cryptomator program, I had, and still have, my Documents folder backed up to OneDrive. Files are on my computer as well as the cloud and Quicken had no problem as long files were in the Documents folder. OneDrive doesn't update files until after they are closed.

I thank everyone for their time and inputs. I was curious as to why Quicken was acting the way it is and if there was anything that could be done. I have two laptops, a Dell 17" and a HP 15", that are setup the same way. When using the HP, Quicken opens slightly faster than it does on the Dell. Sometime in the future, I'll do a clean install of Windows on one of them and see what happens.

Sherlock

Mark Hartry said:

@splasher: You said you use Veracrypt, which I'm familiar with. Cryptomator works the same way and so does Boxcryptor. Cryptomator is a little more convenient to use than Boxcryptor, which is why I'm using it. OneDrive has a personal vault but it does not allow for the storage of files on the hard drive, cloud only.
@sherlock Prior to using the Cryptomator program, I had, and still have, my Documents folder backed up to OneDrive. Files are on my computer as well as the cloud and Quicken had no problem as long files were in the Documents folder. OneDrive doesn't update files until after they are closed.

I thank everyone for their time and inputs. I was curious as to why Quicken was acting the way it is and if there was anything that could be done. I have two laptops, a Dell 17" and a HP 15", that are setup the same way. When using the HP, Quicken opens slightly faster than it does on the Dell. Sometime in the future, I'll do a clean install of Windows on one of them and see what happens.

Mark Hartry

> @Sherlock said:
> If you've been accessing the Quicken file in a folder actively maintained by OneDrive and have not had any problems, you may have been lucky. You may still discover the Quicken file has a non-recoverable corruption you just haven't detected yet. Note: Various Quicken program operations temporarily release the file lock which unintentionally allows other programs to access the file with unpredictable consequences.

I've been using OneDrive since Quicken 2016. I also backup Quicken files from within Quicken and backup my computers daily. A couple of months ago, I decided to tighten the security of my systems using a combination of BIOS passwords, Bitlocker, OneDrive, Lastpass, Cryptomator and Macrium Reflect to prevent data loss and unauthorized access. Maybe I've been lucky but I've not had any file corruption problems using OneDrive.

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth I don't really believe the claims that OneDrive (or Dropbox, GoogleDrive) will corrupt data, but it can cause problems.

From what I see in general Quicken keeps the data file locked and each of these cloud services do honor that lock and don't sync while Quicken has the file open. So the only real way to "corrupt" the data or more likely "lose" data would be if one has the data file open on two machines at the same time (or opens the data file on another machine before the sync finishes). This won't really "corrupt" the data file, but it can mean losing entries as one copy replaces another that had more recent/different data entries.

But still I don't recommend the data file being in one of these cloud backup folders because Quicken does close the data file and releases the lock at times to do certain functions, and as such the cloud backup sync might jump in locking the data file preventing Quicken to reopen that data file. This true of when it does backups, validate and repair, moving of investment transactions to another account, and other situations. Another such case could be just closing the data file and then deciding to open it right up again while the cloud backup sync is in progress. Of course the likelihood of this conflict is dependent on the size of the file, if the sync is full or partial and how fast your Internet connection is. This kind error "mystifies" some people and so as a general rule a recommendation not to do it it is the best course of action.

Sherlock

Mark Hartry said:

> @Sherlock said:
> If you've been accessing the Quicken file in a folder actively maintained by OneDrive and have not had any problems, you may have been lucky. You may still discover the Quicken file has a non-recoverable corruption you just haven't detected yet. Note: Various Quicken program operations temporarily release the file lock which unintentionally allows other programs to access the file with unpredictable consequences.

I've been using OneDrive since Quicken 2016. I also backup Quicken files from within Quicken and backup my computers daily. A couple of months ago, I decided to tighten the security of my systems using a combination of BIOS passwords, Bitlocker, OneDrive, Lastpass, Cryptomator and Macrium Reflect to prevent data loss and unauthorized access. Maybe I've been lucky but I've not had any file corruption problems using OneDrive.

If you haven't already, you may want to consider using Duplicati for remote backup.