Certainly it depends on the broker. But yeah, the best method so far is to make sure one keeps MT working for at least once per week to have price data up to date.

No, just save the file from MT to FSB data folder. Max bar setting and number of displayed bars have to be set up correctly in MT, then it's only a matter of periodically updating the data and saving it.

Also, my machine currently saves data using Adobe Acrobat, whereas I see in the tutorials that notepad++ is being used, does this matter?

It saves in a defined format, I think, that's what's important.

Still thinking about this..

I've looked at some data that I saved from MT to FSB at the beginning of the month, and it goes back further than what I am able to load into the MT chart today, so the data definitely isn't around for long.

It looks like I would need to regularly manually download data on the dot to avoid gaps.This presents a perilous problem,  seeing as what we really want is seamless data, so that our backtesting is as accurate as possible, but if I were unable to attend to my regular downloading session, for whatever reason, then we have flawed data, for good.

I've been digging around on google for something to automate this process, (a) to remove some of the burden of performing the task of downloading the data for each timeframe for each pair, every week, open it into notepad++ to find the end of the last import, the beginning of the new one, cut out the duplications, and stitch them together, and (b) to hopefully give the data more accuracy by removing the human error element...

Hopefully it's ok to post a link to a third party site, it is free I think, but I just wondered if the script on here: https://www.currencysecrets.com/blog/20 … ownloader/
had any merit at all, and if some of the more experienced FSB users had any thoughts on it?

Not tried the script, is it the 'MT4 HST Import' tab in the History Centre? Anything to make it more failsafe and less labour intensive!

What worries me about simply saving the data from the chart on a weekly basis is that by doing so, I will overwrite and erase the last batch I saved, so I only ever have a tiny snippet of data..

My broker typically only offers:
26,344 bars for M1
256 bars for M5
2048 for M15 and M30
2685 for H1
8542 for H4
2084 for D1
1024 for W1
256 for MN

If I'm going to get the minimum of 20,000 bars for backtesting a timeframe, the only way I can see to get reliable gapless data is, on a weekly basis, saving it to a temporary file, finding the last line of the last batch, deleting it and everything before it, and copying what's left into the symbol/timeframe file in the relevant data directory...

I'm not shy about doing the work, I'll do what needs to be done, but I'm also very busy running a business!

I searched the web until my eyes went bloodshot yesterday for a method to do this, and along the way discovered what a common problem this is, and how many forum posts there are about it, so I apologise for dragging you all through it again.

Seems like it was fine until around build 600 of MT, the most recent posts of people happily automatically exporting data seem to be about four years old now!

This looks good, I can't find the script though, its says there are two on the Data Import page, is that the Data Import page in the FSB History Center? I can't see any scripts there?

Fantastic, Thank you Popov.

As you have probably read above, my broker only allows me to export tiny quantities, so I must slowly gather it, adding to it each week, until I have enough to backtest with.

Perhaps a good way to ensure that my data is seamless, and minimising the task of gathering it, is to follow the steps outlined here: https://developers.google.com/apps-scri … duplicates

So, using Google Sheets (or spreadsheet of your choice), having a separate sheet for each timeframe for each pair:

-save the new MT chart data to a MT file (Files>Open Data Folder > MQL4>Files)
-copy new data into the correct google sheet for symbol/timeframe (all timeframe folders can be selected and opened in MT 'Files' with notepad++ at once, making it quicker to copy the .csv files to google sheets)
-run 'removeDuplicate' script (must be created first)
-copy the remaining data (which should be ALL data since collecting began) to the correct Data Source for profile in FSB

Is this adequate, or is there a better way?

Thanks,
Simon