How far back do you keep your Quicken data file backups?

BK

I backup with a date stamp every time I close Quicken. Sporadically I organize by deleting older ones as follows:

• Yearly: Keep one per year for the last 7 years.
• Monthly: Keep one monthly for the last 24 months.
• Daily: Keep the last 60 days ~20 files since I use Quicken about twice a week.

At what point do you delete your old backups? What is a scenario to ever use a backup from 3+ months ago or older given that you have newer ones? I am thinking that a combination of daily and monthly for 12 months is more than sufficient. Appreciate your thoughts.

MangoMan

Disk space or off-PC storage options are not an issue with low to no cost. The bigger issue is keeping track of Quicken passwords associated with older backups. Can't see much reason for keeping things older than 1 year.

splasher

I've got backups going back to 2006 (QW2004 program), but I keep them for testing when someone has a problem with an older versiion.

@BK I think you have a great scheme going, though you might consider adding the Quicken data file that you used to do your taxes to the annual backups, unless that is the one you keep for annual, then just one annual would suffice.

Rocket J Squirrel

Old backups can be a time bomb if you use reminders, especially auto-entered ones. Vote for this idea:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7874393/allow-disabling-of-reminders-when-restoring-a-backup

Ps56k2

the question is - why are you keeping ANY backups ?

For me, its in case of self inflicted disaster, or, in the more often case - Quicken inflicted disaster.
So - I have the auto backups taken often… maybe keeping 5 or so -
Then for manual backups - I take them every so often after making changes, or new securities, etc -
I therefore have several "recent" backups to fall back onto when Quicken screws up -
and a twice monthly backup going back 6 months.

I also do full "document folder" backups to my offline external disks - alternating between different 2TB external disks.
These backups are kept for a couple years - for archiving docs, photos, TurboTax, etc -

BK

@splasher , yes, that is exactly the one I keep and move it into my tax return folder, out of sight, out of mind.

I never thought of the reminders @Rocket J Squirrel . I am left with just a few because I dislike them and I am planning to delete them as they come up.

One other thing I do occasionally is to create a complete set of 'QIF Exports' in case I ever need to restart fresh. I had to do that in 2020 I think when both, my data file and my Quicken 'ID/Account' became corrupted! Long story short I ended up creating a new account and a fresh data file and managed to successfully import all my data with 100% accuracy - perhaps because there are many features I do not use such as bill pay, cloud, mobile & web, schedules, calendars etc. I did post my steps.

Thank you all.

BK

You are right @Ps56k2 . That is why I posted the question with the intention of reducing them. Thank you.

Ps56k2

here's my manual list - if I have to go back beyond a week or prior to last Q release - then there is something seriously wrong -

Chris_QPW

@BK doing the QIF exports is something people (including myself) seldom talk about for a "backup", but seems to me to b a very good idea. If you can't get back into Quicken for any reason, it will be the only way you can move your data to something else. Oh, and that goes for a corrupted data file that no longer can be repaired.

Personally, my backup system for Quicken data files is to use SubVersion/SVN, which is a source control system. It gives me the full history since I started using it with each commit only being the differences. It is way overkill "history wise" since I doubt even if I found out that I needed to go back more than say 6 months, that I would ever do that. Certainly, when you get out to years, it might not even be possible.

I have 5689 versions going back to September 2018 which take up 21.2GB for a data file that is currently 165MB. "Pruning" versions isn't an option with SubVerion.