No recent backups available (Q Mac)

CharPatton
CharPatton Member ✭✭
Hi:

Tryin' to backup. Prefs show this:

But only files from December are listed (and I use every day).

System is:

And Quicken version is:

What am I doing wrong? How do I get the last 5 backups saved automatically?

Many thanks!

Best Answer

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    @CharPatton Your first image, of the Finder window of the backups, isn't wide enough to show any meaningful information (e.g. we can't see the full filename nor date of the files). Your image of the Quicken Preferences window shows you are set to have automatic backups, but not where. What RickO is suggesting above is that the current setting for where the backups are stored may be different than the folder you are looking in. 

    Another way to test this: in Quicken, do File > Save a Backup. This should create a backup in the Backups folder, but not in the Automatic Backups sub-folder. If you don't see a new backup there, that tells you Quicken is backing up to some different location than where you're looking.

    I'd also suggest, when this is resolved, that you consider increasing the number of backups you're telling Quicken to save. You say you use Quicken every day, but you're only telling it to retain the most recent 5 sessions, so you have 5 days (or fewer, if you launch and quit Quicken more than once some days) of backups. Users often discover a problem which goes back more than just a few days. Since disk space is plentiful and Quicken backups generally aren't huge, I'd suggest increasing the Preference setting to a much larger number. (I have mine set to save the last 50 backups, which I figure is enough to cover at least a month of work.)
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993

Answers

  • CharPatton
    CharPatton Member ✭✭
    Whoops, forums are a bit wonky when using a Mac and Safari. Here's the Prefs set up:
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Suggest you click the Backup Folder button in prefs and see where they are being saved. Maybe somewhere other than where you're seeing the December backups.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • CharPatton
    CharPatton Member ✭✭
    Thanks for weighing in!

    Apologies that I cannot get the inline images to work correctly.

    But that's what I've done in the first image of each post above.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Hard to tell from your images. Did you look in the Automatic Backups folder to see if they are there?
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    @CharPatton Your first image, of the Finder window of the backups, isn't wide enough to show any meaningful information (e.g. we can't see the full filename nor date of the files). Your image of the Quicken Preferences window shows you are set to have automatic backups, but not where. What RickO is suggesting above is that the current setting for where the backups are stored may be different than the folder you are looking in. 

    Another way to test this: in Quicken, do File > Save a Backup. This should create a backup in the Backups folder, but not in the Automatic Backups sub-folder. If you don't see a new backup there, that tells you Quicken is backing up to some different location than where you're looking.

    I'd also suggest, when this is resolved, that you consider increasing the number of backups you're telling Quicken to save. You say you use Quicken every day, but you're only telling it to retain the most recent 5 sessions, so you have 5 days (or fewer, if you launch and quit Quicken more than once some days) of backups. Users often discover a problem which goes back more than just a few days. Since disk space is plentiful and Quicken backups generally aren't huge, I'd suggest increasing the Preference setting to a much larger number. (I have mine set to save the last 50 backups, which I figure is enough to cover at least a month of work.)
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • CharPatton
    CharPatton Member ✭✭
    Thanks much to you both for posting and attempting to get to the bottom of this! Much appreciated!

    Mystery solved, a combination of my stupidity and a programming error/shortfall.

    When I take your advice ("Another way to test this: in Quicken, do File > Save a Backup.") I get the following error (attached).

    And when I check free disk space on the encrypted mounted disk image that Quicken is kept on, lo and behold, there is very little disk space left!

    So, the programming shortfall is that it did not tell me that there was a shortage of disk space when doing the automatic backup and "successfully" closed with the "doing an automatic backup now" splash message. And my error is allocating too little space!

    All works fine on a new larger encrypted disk image :)

    And I took your sage advice and increased the # of backups.

    Thank you very, very much.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Glad to hear you got it worked out!
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
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