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Will Quicken data under Windows get backed up?
- Thread starter aljoseph
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I would imagine time machine would backup your parallels windows image, and that will contain your quicken data for sure -- just an educated guess from the peanut gallery though.
I would not trust that to happen. As all time machine sees is the virtual drive which never changes in size as far as Time Machine is concerned. It would make an initial backup of the drive but after that is completed I would think Time Machine would just see one large unchanging file.
The only customer I have that uses parallels. I set up Outlook so that the data files are located in the Home folder on the Mac side rather than the Windows side. That way as that file changes it gets caught by Time Machine. You can do this as well with Quickbooks so I would assume the same would be true for Quicken.
Basically on the Windows side I would not even use the My Documents or User folder (depending on Windows version). Instead I would just link the Mac's Home folder to the Windows desktop and use that as the My Documents/User folder. Alternatively you could use Microsoft Sync Toy to sync My Documents to the Mac manually.
Though I could be wrong and Time Machine does backup the Parallels Virtual Drive. Though when at said customers site I never noticed Time Machine running a 30GB to 40GB backup automatically. Since backup would require copying the entire virtual drive every time not just the quicken file.
The only customer I have that uses parallels. I set up Outlook so that the data files are located in the Home folder on the Mac side rather than the Windows side. That way as that file changes it gets caught by Time Machine. You can do this as well with Quickbooks so I would assume the same would be true for Quicken.
Basically on the Windows side I would not even use the My Documents or User folder (depending on Windows version). Instead I would just link the Mac's Home folder to the Windows desktop and use that as the My Documents/User folder. Alternatively you could use Microsoft Sync Toy to sync My Documents to the Mac manually.
Though I could be wrong and Time Machine does backup the Parallels Virtual Drive. Though when at said customers site I never noticed Time Machine running a 30GB to 40GB backup automatically. Since backup would require copying the entire virtual drive every time not just the quicken file.
Thanks for the helpful information guys. I'm going to do a couple of quick backups (time machine software but on my own separate HD) to see if the winxp.pvm file contains the data that i need backed up. If so, great, but if not, I'll have to make separate arrangements to back up needed data.
The way I do it on my Mac Pro and Quicken (Windows installed with bootcamp, so no virtual file, and VMWare Fusion), is I have a mac directory mapped in Windows, and I just do a Quicken backup every day or so. It is local, so it goes fast. I probably should go cleanup my older backups, since they are still in the time machine, but I also use an online backup service so they also get backed up there.
I've done a couple of automatic backups and the Quicken data is successfully retained as desired; that is the winxp.pvm file contains the latest iteration of Quicken data. While that is indeed good news, I think I will backup this data on a usb thumb drive. The software is easily replaced, the data is what is important to me. Thanks for some helpful advice.