FSX backed up to USB drive

[beavis777712]

After a clean install of Windows 7-64bit on my Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB, I decided do something new with FSX. On my new dedicated game hard drive, also a WD Black 640, which I formatted the 1st partition to 150GB, I did a clean install FXS, Acceleration, FS Global 2010, UTX USA, UTX Canada, UTX Europe, GEX North America, GEX Europe, plus all of the updates/patches for these add-on’s, per NickN’s directions, taking special care to go slow and give my hard drive time to write the data to disk, restarting the computer, de-fragging etc. After several days of flying and making sure FSX was working properly (it worked great) I copied the folder on my game drive that contained my FSX and add-on scenery installation to my external USB hard drive. My thinking was the next time I do a clean install of windows, or if my game drive fails, all I will have to do is copy the folder I backed up on my external USB hard drive to my new hard drive. I was curious if I could play FSX by launching the FSX application icon from my USB drive and everything worked. My question, would it work if I had a fresh install of Windows?

Phenom II 965 (oc to 3.6Mhz)
Asus M3A78-EM
Sapphire 5870-1GB
8GB 800Mhz DDR2
2x640GB Western Digital Caviar Blacks
Corsair 750W Power
21.5" Samsung SyncMaster

[opaplano]

A clean install of your Operating System would mean you would have a "clean" registry so any FS related registry entries would be missing.

That surely would present some issues.

[f16jockey_2]

I was curious if I could play FSX by launching the FSX application icon from my USB drive and everything worked.

Examining the "Properties" of yr shortcut will reveal it still points to yr original install.

Wim

[cianpars]

When I do that, I simply reinstall fsx from the disks, install sp1 and sp2 to ensure the reg entries are there and overwrite the fsx folder and the relevant folders in my profile from my backup.

IAN

[loki]

Did you also copy over the fsx.cfg and other files located in your user directory?

Another way to do a complete backup of your system is to use a program like Acronis True Image, O&O DiskImage Pro, Windows 7 Backup or Macrium Reflect Free to create a complete image of all of your hard drives. Then if one or all fail, you can just restore the system back to the original image for a clean install or a more recent image to get back to where the system was before it failed.