Comments on: Quicken, rsync, and resource forks

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:57:20 +0000

So glad I found this guide – thanks! Resource forks were also not respected by my online backup service – IDrive!

I had success restoring my Quicken file by following the 8-step procedure above. Copied and pasted into Terminal with no alterations except Step 4 to switch directories.
(On Leopard, Terminal opens by default to the Users Home directory; so cd Desktop, then cd dir worked for me. Also, the firs mv command without any slashes worked for me.)

Getting the Developer Tools:
I first went to the Apple website to try and download the “free” Xcode Developer tools, but you must be a Developer subscriber first – at $99/year. Plus I don’t know if I could have downloaded version 3 for Leopard – the current version 4.x requires Snow Leopard or higher.
I finally figured out the Developer Tools version 3 is on the Leopard install disk/Optional Installs/Xcode Tools – at least on the retail version I had kicking around.
It would be nice if someone could post any other tips for getting the Developer Tools; I don’t know if they are on the Snow Leopard install disks or on the Lion install di . . . er – I have no clue here.

By: Tresy Kilbourne

Tresy Kilbourne — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:03:42 +0000

Just to be clear, the first command omits a slash:
“mv ._new.qdfm ._old.qdfm”?

Because I get a “no such file or directory” error when I run that one. The others work. Unfortunately the outcome is not successful. (BTW Disk Warrior zeroes in on my Quicken file with messages about overlapping or conflicting resources, so this is definitely the problem.)

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:41:43 +0000

Great! Good to know this is still helping people.

By: Cameron Little

Cameron Little — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:10:40 +0000

Thank you so much for posting this! I just did it and it seems to have worked perfectly. I am helping my mother restore her data and I’m pretty sure the categories are still there. (at least some of them are).

Mac OS X 10.6.4
xcode 3.2.4

By: Ernie

Ernie — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:34:33 +0000

Thanks for these instructions. Newer versions of Rsync now handle resource forks just fine, but at some point in the past few years I was using a version that wasn’t… and I screwed up an old Quicken data file. These few steps were a data-saver!

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:53:42 +0000

You saved us a lot of extra work. If anyone comes up with a way to recover the budget info, please let us know. But, we are incredibly grateful to have recovered what we did. Thank you!

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:47:33 +0000

Thank you so much for compiling and posting this. It saved me!

By: Tamir

Tamir — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:05:57 +0000

Thanks for this info. I am switching to moneydance becuase I am so pissed that my diligent backups (using rsync -E, that is extended attributes) didnt copy resource forks. I must of made a mistake. I custom built v3.0.5 of GNU rsync as it promises support for extended attributes (resource forks).

Fortunately I had another backup, albeit somewhat older, that was made using superduper and on sparse disk image. Resource forks are preserved using SD and with carbon copy cloner. I believe both of those tools employ the newer rysnc (GNU v3.0.5) that seems to be able to preserve resource forks.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:41:12 +0000

Not likely is my guess. I haven’t actually tried this, but you may be able to store the Quicken file in a disk image (create with the Apple Disk Utility, and you could even encrypt it). Because the disk image would be treated as a file, it should backup everything within it–including resource forks!

By: James

James — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:50:56 +0000

Thank you so much for posting this! I had been trying to figure out how to do exactly this for a day now. I had given up hope and was about to call it quits.

Thanks again. Now to somehow get rsync to copy the resource forks…