Backup File Size

[dbender54]

I looked at my backup file size, which seems to be getting large (?)
It;s currently 21.6 meg
Is this problem? FM seems to be slower recently, especially creating back-ups
On FM 2016 Pro 2016.14.13.100

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi dbender54,

That is a pretty large backup file. How many investments do you have?

[dbender54]

How would I find the number of investments? Is this include not only the current open investments but all prior sold investments?

[Mark]

Look at the "Properties..." of your top-most sub-portfolio. It includes all "open" investments, which if you've hidden your sold positions, they are still open.

[Ivan]

Mark,

I noticed this post and checked my backup file size. It is also 21 Meg. I didn't realize this was unusually large. I have 209 investments. The oldest transactions go back to 2009, but pricing data can be quite old as I always download it from the inception date of the fund (I have all funds, no individual stocis). I'm not experiencing any issues. Please let me know if the file size indicates a problem.

Thanks,
Ivan

[dbender54]

I have 663 investments in 23 sub-portfolios. About 125 of those (excluding the cash accounts) are current holdings. Probably 12 of what FM shows of 23 (never had 23 real sub-portfolios) are active. I moved all of the money out of an employer 401k to a broker, but keep the portfolio there (no value) so it keeps the history. Another sub-portfolio was closed out and the cash moved into the next level portfolio up (a managed account that was part of an IRA was liquidated and the value moved into the parent). Some others only have small values. The transactions probably go back to early 2009.

[Mark]

Hi Ivan and dbender54,

This does not seem unusual or a problem. The backup file (*.FMB) contains all your investment files (*.dat), your portfolio file (*.mm4), and all your preferences from the registry in one combined backup file. If you were to measure the size of all these files, it should come out close to the size of the *.FMB file. The *.FMB file is not compressed, so the sizes should roughly match. There is no limit on the size of the backup file, so this is not a problem.

[dbender54]

Thanks so much. U routinely back it up, which was when I took a look at the size.

[Ivan]

Thanks for the reassurance Mark. The size of the backup file does very closely match the total size of the individual data files.

Ivan