Why are my QDF data files, auto backups and manual backups different sizes?

Question

Original data file looks like this:

Automatic backups from the /BACKUP subdirectory below my data file (done every 5 times the file is opened):

These files are all the same size.  I was going to try to archive some of my data before creating a new file with only a few years of data because it is such a big, slow loading file.  From the File Menu, I selected ‘Copy or Backup File’, then ‘Create a complete backup’.  I changed folder and file name and following is the file that was created as a backup, and then the file created when I double clicked on the backup file and restored the data:

As you can see, these backup and restored files are much smaller than the original data file and the automatic backups!  This is rather disconcerting and I was wondering what the explanation is for the significant difference in file sizes.  I am worried that the manual copy/backup might be missing data.  Or is there a problem with my original file / backups?  Recommendations, please on what I should do to have a better(?) data file and backups.  Thank you in advance.

Sherry H · Answer

I made another backup this morning after adding a few transactions over the weekend and the backup size did increase a bit.

The data file was still at the same 304,560KB.  Without doing anything else (other than the backup), I ran a validate and there were no errors found, but look at the size of the data file now:

I think you were correct about a lot of deleted data space being reused in the file, probably from years ago doing archiving / year end copies.  The validated file seemed to open ok.  The test will be in using the file over the next few weeks to see if there are any issues.

Thank you again for your help.

Sherry H · Answer

Thank you for your reply. The original file would be from many, many years ago, and has had data archived occasionally.  Perhaps that is why there seems to be no growth in the file/auto backups.   I will test adding more data and creating a manual backup to see if the added data increases the size of the manual backup.  I will also try the validate and repair.  This may take me awhile, but I will try to post again with results!

Jim_Harman · Answer

Actually I am surprised that your main QDF file and the automatic backups are all the same size. What I see is that my file grows a little each time I exit Quicken.

Have you deleted a lot of data from your file? If that is the case, it may be that in your main file Quicken is re-using space where the deleted data once was, and creating the manual backup reclaims the deleted space.

To test this theory, you could create another manual backup after some more activity such as downloading new transactions and compare to the size of your 4/10 backup.

Doing a File > Validate and repair might also reclaim the space in your main file.. Back up first, just in case …