Quicken 2004 won't backup to external DVD drive

[tuni]

My 1st post and I'm totally frustrated. I've installed vmware fusion, have the virtual WinXP up and running. Have installed old version (2004) of Quicken just to keep track of credit card expenditures etc.....Installed Kangeroo Quicksilver DVD+/- Drive, placed my old DVD-RW in it, The icon shows the drive on the Apple desktop. Quicken (virtual machine) sees the installed "d" drive but cannot backup to it! I get message that Drive and CD not available!

I even tried inserting the DVD-RW inthe iMac slot, again it shows the icon Vol_1D: on the Mac desktop. But, I can't seem to "drag" the DVD-RW icon to the virtual machine nor will Quicken backup to it - doesn't see it!!!

I'm real new to this so amhaving a heck of a time. I called vmware fusion tech support but apparently "they are having technical difficulties" and referred me here.

I'm totally confused and frustrated....any help would be appreciated.

many thanks

[admin]

The optical drive can only by controlled by one OS at a time, so if you're seeing it in OS X, it won't be available to XP. You need to be sure you're using the physical drive and connect the drive to the guest under Virtual Machine > CD/DVD.

[WoodyZ]

I even tried inserting the DVD-RW inthe iMac slot, again it shows the icon Vol_1D: on the Mac desktop. But, I can't seem to "drag" the DVD-RW icon to the virtual machine nor will Quicken backup to it - doesn't see it!!!

You may want to take some time a read the documentation! Click Help on the VMware Fusion menu bar and select VMware Fusion Help > Contents tab > Managing Virtual Machines > Configuring the CD/DVD Drive > To connect and configure a CD/DVD drive...

[tuni]

I'll try again however am pretty sure I saw that the drive is connected in the virtual machine.

thx

[rcardona2k]

VMware Fusion maps your internal DVD-RW drive as a read-only DVD-R drive not RW. So you can not burn your backup directly from the virtual machine.

This are some limitations about how these DVD-RW drives mapped via IDE works. Without belaboring as to why the limitations, your easiest route is get your backup to the OS X side and burn your DVD from there. Assuming the backup file is not over 1 GB, you can save your QB backup to the Windows desktop then drag-n-drop it over to the OS X desktop, or you can enable VMware Shared Folders or Windows Sharing on your Mac (this seems to be a better choice for some). Once the files are in OS X, backing up them should be easy.

[tuni]

the drive is connected and recognized but Quicken is unable to backup to it. I called tech support at vmware (they tried to help but said the real experts were at SmithMicro) but that didn't help at all - referred me to SmithMicro who were not going to kill themselves to be helpful either.

<sigh> gettinbg no place with this.

thx

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

the drive is connected and recognized but Quicken is unable to backup to it. I called tech support at vmware (they tried to help but said the real experts were at SmithMicro) but that didn't help at all - referred me to SmithMicro who were not going to kill themselves to be helpful either.

<sigh> gettinbg no place with this.

I do not have Quicken installed so I can't test a Quicken specific backup scenario however I can say the following in general. I was not able to write anything to an external CD\DVDRW Drive either using Firewire or USB. I was able to write to the built-in CD\DVDRW on my MBP however depending on what software I was using I had to change it from an IDE to SCSI when doing it from a Windows XP VM. IIRC standard Windows write functionality worked with both IDE (the default) and SCSI.

Maybe the solution is to backup to a file and then use something other than Quicken to write the backup to optical media either from within the VM or OS X.