iCloud Storage

Arthur Bortz
Arthur Bortz Member Posts: 39
edited September 2020 in Accounts Hosted
I want to get rid of backups on the cloud that i no longer need. How do I go about this?

Comments

  • HeatherJ
    HeatherJ Member Posts: 33 ✭✭
    edited January 2017
    The backups will be removed automatically by Reckon after 30 days. Don't forget you can download the backups so you have your own copy for safe keeping. If you want to delete them from the reckon hosted back up drive you can use the shift delete option Regards Heather
  • Shirley Ingle
    Shirley Ingle Accredited Partner Posts: 138 Accredited Partner Accredited Partner
    edited July 2020

    Hi Arthur/Heather  The RAH backups still show in the B drive until you do a clean up. Reckon don't seem to delete any backups from this area as I have recently gone in some files and deleted old backups as far back as 2015.

    When you are deleting from the B drive, be careful how do click on the file to be deleted as you could find you are downloading the file instead of deleting the file. After a few times of the program taking off and downloading you will get the hang of how to just click and delete.

  • John Graetz
    John Graetz Member Posts: 1,651 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    I agree with you Shirley.  It is up to the user to delete the files.  If you have too many of them, like I did once a couple of years ago, taking up a large amount of space, I received a communication from Reckon telling me that I was taking up too much space and to get rid of some.  As a result, I now only keep backups in the B drive for the last month, deleting the rest.  Prior to that, I was unaware of the consequences.  John L G
  • John Graetz
    John Graetz Member Posts: 1,651 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    That is a reasonable point Kevin.  I guess it has a lot to do with how many of them you are keeping and how much space that are taking up on the Reckon servers. If in their eyes you are taking up too much space, you can rest assured, based on my experience, that they will be in contact with you. Knowing that Reckon never guarantee that nothing will ever happen with their data, I also take the step of keeping additional backups on my own hard drive, as an insurance.  John L G
  • John Graetz
    John Graetz Member Posts: 1,651 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    I think that you might have a winner here Kevin.  Sounds like a good idea to me.
    John L G
  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited January 2017
    We have looked at this in the past Kevin re storage + charge and user feedback was strongly against it, and to be honest, it is not required.

    As you know, if your backup is completely verified there is no need to keep historical backups other than if you made a major change and needed to roll back. 

    What I would personally suggest to users who want multiple backups, which is fine, is to download them and store locally with the assurance of a backup drive, or drop into one of the many free online storage services available today.

    And John is of course quite correct - we do occasionally contact users who generally have forgotten to delete backups, or those who are unsure how many they should keep. It is not unusual for a user to have many Gigabytes worth of these.

    Shirley is also correct - we do not delete these automatically as we could not guarantee the user has completed any backups in the last 30 days. 

    Again it is important to ensure your backups are Completely Verified to ensure they can be restored if required. ** This cannot be guaranteed if you run a quick backup. Also, a complete verification is the only way to reset the tlg file (transaction log). If this log file grows in size (we have seen 8Gb log files) it will dramatically slow down your company file).

    Note verified backup settings below.

    image
  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited September 2020
    Your tlg file is accessed under the Q Drive:

    image

    Note this tlg is 1.8Gb, and much larger than the company (QBW) file which tells us 2 things:

    1. This company file will run slow, or at the very least much slower than it should
    2. This company file has not been backed up correctly in a long time

  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited September 2020
    Prior to commencing a verified backup, Reckon Accounts will validate the data's integrity. nb. Reckon Accounts will not restore a backup with integrity issues. That is, the restore process will fail. Many users are unaware of this.. until it is too late of course.

    image

    If an error in the data is found, the user is prompted to rebuild the data file.

    image

    image

    Once completed, the verified backup can be completed without issue and importantly, the backed up data is not corrupt. ie. A backup of corrupted data is a pointless backup as it can't be restored.

  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited January 2017
    A customer barely interested in keeping a quality backup is something I haven't encountered Kevin, and as I said, at a minimum only one is required. Feel free to point them to this post when you are next discussing the importance of backups. I will add further info on the tlg file (post verify) to close off.
  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited September 2020
    tlg file size post Complete Verification backup

    image


  • John Graetz
    John Graetz Member Posts: 1,651 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    Thanks for the info about the tlg file Jason.  This was something that I was totally aware of.  That will cause me to change some of my practices, part of which I did after the importance of the verification process was pointed out in this forum a few months ago.  John L G
  • John Graetz
    John Graetz Member Posts: 1,651 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    Please note correction in my first line above.  It should have read "....totally UNAWARE..."  Apologies for any misunderstanding that anybody might have had.  John L G
  • Stephen Walker
    Stephen Walker Member Posts: 1
    edited February 2019
    Hi Jason I have 2011 Reckon my files are saved as HCX,IDX,QDF DATA and QIN can I delete the old files?


  • Jason Hollis
    Jason Hollis Alumni Posts: 516 Reckon Staff
    edited February 2019
    Hi Stephen. Yours is Reckon Personal/home and business, but the same principle applies. That is, you only really need to keep 1 x back-up for a database, as long as that back-up is not corrupt, and of course is in a safe place (preferably in an online storage repository like Google drive, Dropbox etc..). 

    This is my personal 'extra-safe' back-up regime. 

    To ensure the back-up is of a non-corrupt file (database), run a validation first. 



    TIP
    To perform a Super Validation hold down Ctrl + Shift keys whilst performing a validation. 

    Then back-up your file as a (*.rkn) file



    I then un-check (*.rkn) and create another backup.

    To be extra safe, I personally ZIP my entire Reckon Personal/Home and Business folder (including backups) and upload that to a free online storage service, ensuring that my ATTACHMENTS folder is included in this zip. 

    Once completed, you should be fine to delete old back-ups. 

    If you want to be extra extra safe, you should create a windows snapshot of your pc so you can restore if anything goes wrong. The process varies from version to version of windows so do your own research then. 

    Note
    This article has information about the attachments folder when restoring a backup. Helpful for understanding how the attachments folder works with Reckon Accounts Personal. 


    Kind regards,
    Jason