Backups, Calculator anomaly

[JUNIPER]

   Sound advice. I save GC to a desktop "Finance" folder, and copy from
   time to time to a desktop "backup" folder. Everything is also saved to
   an external hard drive, plus I save critical data every so often to a
   removable SanDisk, which I keep stashed away from my desk. I also
   consider storing saved data outside the house. (Years ago I learned a
   painful lesson about the importance of backups!)
   On another matter: Tools -> financial calculator anomaly... Trying to
   find out how much sooner my mortgage would be paid off by increasing my
   payment, no matter what values I use I get an enormous and wrong
   "payment Periods" result. For example, entering $10,000 as the "Present
   Value," 6% as the interest, $1139.15 as the payment, and zero as the
   "future value" I get 4,294,967,287 "Payment Periods." In fact, no
   matter what values I use I get results of 4 1/4 billion or so.
   Steve J
Message: 11
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:27:23 -0500
From: Mike or Penny Novack [1]<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
Subject: Re: Can't Parse
To: Elizabeth Dodd [2]<edodd at billiau.net>
Cc: [3]gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Message-ID: [4]<474C1B3B.4040806 at mtdata.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Some general comments


>>Trying going "to a backup file and then move it OUTSIDE
>>your ~/.gnucash tree and then File -> Open it" resulted in the same problem
>>as before, but just on chance I tried something else and it worked fine.
>>Instead of trying to open GC via a data file or via the desktop icon, I
>>went to "Applications" and "Office" and tried it from there. It not only
>>opened immediately, but with the latest data.
>>
>>"All's well that ends well!"
>>
>>Steve J
>>
>>

>
>I could only guess that there was a save to the *right* place which has saved
>your bacon.
>
>Does the FAQ say "Before upgrading, make a backup of your precious data" ?
>As someone who "lost'" 7 months of data in a hard drive crash I know this all
>too well. Re-entering data is very painful and that nearly happened to you
>here.
>
>

1) There is no particular reason for you to be having your books (and
the logs and the backups) in any of the GnuCash directories. Just
because that's where GnuCash would have them by default isn't relevant.
If you specify some other directory in which to save the books when you
first create them...
   a) The directory you specify for that is where GnuCash will place the
backups and logs every save.
   b) That directory will be on the list of places you can select when
from within GnuCash you use "open". May need to scroll down to see that.
   c) Having them elsewhere makes it much safer when you alter the
software. But doing this was sort of automatic for me. In this case I am
maintaining books for an organization so of course wanted the data kept
in a directory devoted to that organization's data.

2) ALWAYS backup all your user data before any software change.
Actually, you should have some regular frequency of doing backups even
if no software change. You decide how much of your data you can afford
to lose/replace --- a month's, a week's, a day's, etc. This advice is
not specific to GnuCash.

References

   1. mailto:stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
   2. mailto:edodd at billiau.net
   3. mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org
   4. mailto:474C1B3B.4040806 at mtdata.com