Full Quicken 05 restore issues with DOS formatted disks?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken,comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.sys.mac.system,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.msdos (More info?)

In article <john.doggett-903B09.08535514092005@news.charter.net>,
Bible John <john.doggett@x-files.gov> wrote:

> I once read a thread in another board of a user that was having a very
> hard time importing his old Eudora mail and settings from his old mac to
> his new one via floppy or zip disk, because the disks were formatted as
> DOS when the program only recognized Mac OS formatted floppies or zips.
>
> I really hope that I do not have the same problem in the future with my
> 7 years of financial records in the rare event that Quicken 2005 crashes
> on me. Or just to be safe should I reformat my flash disk as a mac OS
> drive? I would lose the ability to use it on a PC.

It is not a problem to keep Mac files on a PC formatted disk; it is only
a problem if you try to copy files between two different Macs on a PC
formatted disk, and one Mac is using OS X and the other is not.

OS X and OS 9 store Mac-specific information, such as resource forks and
Finder metadata, differently on a PC disk. If you copy files onto a PC
disk using OS 9 (or OS 8), you may find that the information is not
readable by OS X and vice-versa.

--
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink:
all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

Archived from groups: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken,comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.sys.mac.system,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.msdos (More info?)

In article <john.doggett-903B09.08535514092005@news.charter.net>,
Bible John <john.doggett@x-files.gov> wrote:

> I do not know if this is a question for the Mac experts, the Quicken
> experts or the PC experts so I am posting to all these groups.
>
> Okay for years I backed up my Quicken data to a Mac OS (HFS standard)
> zip disk. But ever since moving to a laptop running OSX I have decided
> to start backing up to a USB flash drive. For compatibility reasons I
> formatted my flash disk as a DOS drive so it could be read in PC's.
>
> I once read a thread in another board of a user that was having a very
> hard time importing his old Eudora mail and settings from his old mac to
> his new one via floppy or zip disk, because the disks were formatted as
> DOS when the program only recognized Mac OS formatted floppies or zips.
>
> I really hope that I do not have the same problem in the future with my
> 7 years of financial records in the rare event that Quicken 2005 crashes
> on me. Or just to be safe should I reformat my flash disk as a mac OS
> drive? I would lose the ability to use it on a PC.

Just curious, but why bother keeping your Quicken data in DOS format? Do
you really use it on both a Windows laptop and your Mac? If you want to
do this, probably the best option would be to keep two backup copies:
one on an Mac formatted USB flash drive and another on a FAT formatted
USB flash drive. Considering how cheap these USB flash drives are
becoming, there isn't much of a reason not to do that.

If this were me, I would actually back up my data to an external
firewire drive. I personally think USB flash drives are too unreliable,
and too easy to lose. I would not trust my only backup to a USB flash
drive for any sort of data. Once every week or so, I simply use the disk
restore feature in Mac OS X's Disk Utilities to clone my hard drive to
another hard drive.