Locate QuickenBackup data in my External HD Time Machine backup

LavenderLucy wrote:

Just to clarify I don't believe there are any problems with my backups.

The problem is I can't find my data files are in that backup. It's not clear where the C: drive that is very clear in the VM is in the TM backup.

Thanks for your response.

Have you simply tried to restore your entire Parallels virtual machine file? That would be restoring your entire Windows PC (virtual) to its state as of some date in the past when Time Machine was run. A date in the past when hopefully all your "lost" files are there.

https://download.parallels.com/desktop/v1.5/docs/en_US/Parallels%20Desktop%20User's%20Guide/33776.htm#:~:text=By%20default%2C%20Parallels%20Desktop%20stores,menu%20bar%20and%20choose%20Preferences.

By default, Parallels Desktop stores virtual machines in ~/Documents/Parallels.

To change the default location for new virtual machine installations:

• Do one of the following:
  • Click the Parallels icon  in the menu bar and choose Preferences. Then click General.
  • If the Parallels Desktop menu bar is visible at the top of the screen, choose Parallels Desktop > Preferences, and then click General.
• Choose a location from the Virtual Machines Folder menu.

All newly created virtual machines are stored in the new location. Any existing virtual machines remain in their original locations.

So to restore that entire Parallels virtual machine file, you would open the Documents folder on your Mac. You should see a listing of all files and folders inside Documents. Then open Time Machine to browse backups. It should show you all backups of that Parallels file. Go back to before your glitch occurred and restore that entire Parallels file. I suggest telling Time Machine to keep both the existing and the restored files (it will ask you; alternatively you can rename the existing one to "Parallels_old" or something like that before restoring from TM), so nothing is lost and you can revert back if this doesn't get you what you are looking for.

I am only going to talk about how to manipulate Time Machine backups, not the manual backups you made inside Parallels.

MacOS in general and Time machine can NOT look inside theParallels drive-file named Window.pvm.

Time Machine can only back up the ENTIRE Parallels Virtual Machine Drive-file.

In Finder, I recommend you choose LIST view and Select (but not Open) that file:

/Users/Shared/Parallels/Windows.pvm

Now from the menubar, click the Time machine Icon, and from its menu, choose "enter time machine".

A stack of windows will appear, showing the most recent backup version in the frontmost window, with a stack of older versions behind it.

Because Time machine can not look inside Parallels Virtual Machine Drive-file, the only thing of note is the DATE, which will vary. You want to move back through the stack of windows until you reach one just before you did the update that made such a mess of things.

If you are SURE you have found the saved version that is not mangled, you can click the (Restore) button, and the saved copy will replace the current version on your drive.

if you CANCEL instead of Restore, nothing will be changed at all.

I mean to explicitly say, look on your current drive, not in your backups.

the way time machine APP (not to be confused with Time machine Preferences) works is that you navigate to the folder that you want to find the backups for. with that window open in Finder, you use the Time machine icon from the menubar, and choose "Enter Time machine"

You finder window the turns into a time machine wind, with the very recent backup of that same finder window on the Top of a stack of older windows, receding in time into the past.

If your 2024 folder is missing, then look in the enclosing folder window.

...

Then if you don't have a manual backup made inside Windows, you will need to use time machine to restore the ENTIRE windows drive-file using the procedure I described above that.

That is great!

Restoring with Time machine is amazing, but is really wonky to use.

<< After running what I thought was a Quicken update 6/4/24 I opened Quicken and it displayed data from February 2023. >>

Most likely the new version picked up the default filename, rather than the file you have been using all along. Look around for quicken files with more recent dates, and when you find the most recent one, double-click to open it. my old version still uses .qdfm files.

Stop.

Step away from your backups.

You have NOT had a data disaster, and your backups should not need to be looked at ...Yet.

Look on the ACTIVE drive, for a file with the Quicken file TYPE, but not the default name, (default might be Accounts). You are looking for a more recent file of Quicken file type, but a very recent date from just before you upgraded.

It is sort of difficult to completely LOSE a folder with more than a handful of files in it. One way is to accidentally drag and drop it into another folder nearby with a stray mouse movement.

-------

I also had a Quicken data disaster doing a major upgrade and drive re-assignment. In the process of repurposing several drives, I also managed to eliminate some several months of Quicken files. I was running an older version of Quicken in a virtual machine, and had not been backing up faithfully enough, because the entire virtual machine drive was so big.

If your folders with most of 2013 and 2024 are really gone, and your backups are no help, the way to reconstruct your data is to pull out your paper bank statements. staring from the last Quicken-Reconciled Bank statement, Reconcile your checking account(s) AGAIN, month by month, adding every transaction missing from the Quicken Register by transcribing it from your bank statements.

I can say from experience it is tedious, but NOT impossible. After very months's additions and reconcile, you are back in balance again, and nothing has been lost and you are closer to being up-to-date. If you don't have paper statements, you may have to rely on your bank's ability to show you old transactions online, or arrange with them to get you that old information.

LavenderLucy wrote:

Ah, yes, I vaguely remember way back that I would alternate a couple of names in case a file became corrupted. But just vaguely.

my file names are C:/......./DataBACKUP YYYY-DD-MM.qdf. So each backup actually has the date of the backup in the file name.

when i back up more than once during the day it adds another letter (maybe R) and #. So each backup is a unique file.

After a couple of months I go in and delete the all the backups except month end. So there are probably 30 data files that disappeared - some of them were in a "2023" folder and some in a "2024" folder that has vanished. In the 2023 folder the most recent file is February 2023

It is good you are indeed backing up but the manual interventions sound like they can expose you to human error. As Grant said, an inadvertent click or mouse movement ... I think Grant has the best advice here since he uses Quicken also (I do not).

But going forward, for your backups, I would create some independent backups in addition to Time Machine. For instance, you can drag a copy of an entire folder or virtual machine file to an online storage like Dropbox or other similar services. If the file is too big for that, at least put a copy of it on a separate external drive. Also, making "clone" type backups with SuperDuper or CCC is independent of Time Machine. When I am doing taxes, whenever I do something with the returns I make copies on external drives, on Time Machine, and in the cloud. As it sounds like your primary drive has somehow had a data loss here.

By the way, there isn't a chance you somehow moved the files you can't find inadvertently into iCloud or some other cloud repository, is there?