FS2004 Backup?

Steve - You might want to look at adding an external hardrive for backups. I added a Western Digital external HD to my setup and never regretted it. It has always been there for me when I have made stupid mistakes, which makes it nice! I do backups on the 15th and the last day of every month, and also keep some old backups just in case I want to resurrect and old aircraft that I previously deleted. I use a software Acronis True Image for making mirror images of my entire hardrive.

It takes some effort, but well worth the cost and time to do it!

Rick :cool:

The copy/paste method of the FS folder its self is the main way and probably the only way. With third-party add-ons those WILL have to be reinstalled from scratch since they use registry keys and hidden app data folder directories, etc.

The proper backup would be to backup the FS folder and make sure you have backups of your third-party installs along with their register keys.

I don't care for backups that sit in the computer its self, but it is one of my backup methods. The reason I say this is that if you have only one backup and that hard drive is in the computer, then you have a single point of failure. Should a lightning strike occur, a PSU goes bust, you get a surge or the hard drive goes bust, your so-called backup isn't.

When I backup anything I do so with redundancy in mind. The first method is using two 2 TB hard drives that sit in the computer. Those are synced every now and then with FreeFileSync. Then I have an external USB hard drive that has a backup. Then I use a 50 GB Blu-ray re disk and compress the FS folder with 7 Zip (takes a long time) and burn that massive archive to Blu-ray. Both the Blu-ray disk and the USB external hard drive are stored in fireproof safes. You can buy a fireproof safe meant for electronics for about $35. Keep in mind you'll want o put hard drives USB sticks, optical disks, etc in plastic bags since moisture can occur inside the fireproof safe should god forbid there is a fire.

In addition to that there are all kinds of cloud storage options. I don't use the cloud for FS, but I do use the program CloudBerry to sync critical files to Amazon AWS S3. Then my computer's which are all encrypted are cloned to external hard drives with Clonezilla. I have to use Clonezilla as that is the only software I know of that will clone an encrypted disk and make a 1:1 copy.

My website too is backed up once every 24 hours with my host, and then once a week I manually back it up, it's encrypted with a cascade of ciphers using a very looooong password and that backup is stored on hard drives, Blu-ray, DVD/RW and in two cloud providers. I can pull a backup and backup everything in about an hour's time.

Steve - You might want to look at adding an external hardrive for backups. I added a Western Digital external HD to my setup and never regretted it. It has always been there for me when I have made stupid mistakes, which makes it nice! I do backups on the 15th and the last day of every month, and also keep some old backups just in case I want to resurrect and old aircraft that I previously deleted. I use a software Acronis True Image for making mirror images of my entire hardrive.

 

It takes some effort, but well worth the cost and time to do it!

 

Rick :cool:

If you're a Western Digital fan, then may I suggest a Red drive as those are meant for long term storage. Albeit I think they are a slower drive.

I've been a major fan of Enterprise grade Hitachi hard drives and my 2 TB drives are just that. Check out these stats. LOL

Now while Hitachi is/was a good hard drive manufacture, I believe now they are part of Western Digital so I don't know if the manufacturing of these new drives have changed.

Drive has been power on strong for 2 years, 4 months and 16 days.

As you know how backup FS, simply think to backup FS9.cfg. too.

Bernard

... to get a complete, able to transfer to another computer, backup?

You may find that copy protection prevents some stuff from transferring: that it needs reactivating so will have to be reinstalled.

If the source and destination PCs have identical hardware, you might be better off making an image of your existing machine in order to clone it to the new one.

D

It's easy to make a backup of FS2004.. Nothing fancy needed!

1. Get a portable hard drive

2. Copy the whole Flight Simulator 9 folder (from C:/Program Files/Microsoft Games to the portable drive

3. Copy Flight Simulator Files from My Documents to the portable drive

4. Copy the fs9.cfg to the portable drive

The easiest way to find this, is to download Everything from https://www.voidtools.com/ It's the fastest desktop search engine, & it will find what you are looking for as you type.

5. Download the Registry Repair tool from https://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=library & paste it on the portable drive.. (after copying & pasting the backup sim, run this, & it will tell the registry where the sim is situated.

I use Teracopy from https://www.codesector.com/teracopy This is the fastest copy utility I've found.

I have a backup on my portable drive that I've used many times to install multiple instances of FS2004 (I have 8 different versions currently)

So, no drama at all to backup FS2004.

NOTE: You will probably have to re-install PAYWARE add-ons.

It's easy to make a backup of FS2004.. Nothing fancy needed!

1. Get a portable hard drive

2. Copy the whole Flight Simulator 9 folder (from C:/Program Files/Microsoft Games to the portable drive

3. Copy Flight Simulator Files from My Documents to the portable drive

4. Copy the fs9.cfg to the portable drive

The easiest way to find this, is to download Everything from https://www.voidtools.com/ It's the fastest desktop search engine, & it will find what you are looking for as you type.

 

5. Download the Registry Repair tool from https://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=library & paste it on the portable drive.. (after copying & pasting the backup sim, run this, & it will tell the registry where the sim is situated.

 

I use Teracopy from https://www.codesector.com/teracopy This is the fastest copy utility I've found.

 

I have a backup on my portable drive that I've used many times to install multiple instances of FS2004 (I have 8 different versions currently)

 

So, no drama at all to backup FS2004.

NOTE: You will probably have to re-install PAYWARE add-ons.

Hello Robin

I have used the copy and paste method for moving Fs9 to different drives, but my method is usually of the swear and curse variety until I usually get it sorted.

I have noted your posts concerning multiple copies of Fs9 .

I would like to do it your seemingly effortless way ,rather than my turn blue and swear a lot method.

Just a quote from your post .

. "Copy Flight Simulator Files from My Documents to the portable drive

4. Copy the fs9.cfg to the portable drive"

Which location on the portable drive.

Thanks Andrew

I created a folder called 'Flight Sims' & pasted the files into that folder. You can give that folder any name you like. It just keeps everything in one place.

Setting up multiple installs is very easy..

See here... https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?19087-How-to-Create-Multiple-Installs-of-FS2004

PM me if you get stuck!

I created a folder called 'Flight Sims' & pasted the files into that folder. You can give that folder any name you like. It just keeps everything in one place.

 

Setting up multiple installs is very easy..

See here... https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?19087-How-to-Create-Multiple-Installs-of-FS2004

 

PM me if you get stuck!

Thank you Robin.

If and when I have to move/create another Fs9 copy I will try your way rather than my rather chaotic method of doing

things.:)

Cheers Andrew

Pleasure, Andrew, plenty of blood, sweat, tears, & where the h_ll is that add-on! & if only I can remember how I did that!

All the best, from Cape Town.

Why doing so complicated? Just copy and paste FS9 folder and FS9.cfg to an other drive. Keep a simple and renamed basic FS9 on main drive. It's always useful anyway. No need to manipulate registry.

Bernard

Why doing so complicated? Just copy and paste

Yeah

I use xcopy rather than robocopy. Apparently robocopy can /purge a backup directory of files that have been deleted from the source directory where xcopy can't, but frankly that scares the hell out of me, lol. I make backups because I may want to revert one day, if I purge files that have been deleted there's no way I can restore a deleted file if that's what I decide to do. I'd rather have a mess of obsolete files in my backup folder and be able to find something I obsoleted 3 years ago than lose it completely by mirroring. Something I obsoleted 3 years ago might be the code snippet I'm looking for today to do something unrelated that I vaguely remember doing in the past. I can see where /mir might have it's place if you where getting a package ready for uploading or something but for general backups I wouldn't use it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ROBOCOPY     ::     Robust File Copy for Windows                              
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

/E :: copy subdirectories, including Empty ones.
/PURGE :: delete dest files/dirs that no longer exist in source.
/MIR :: MIRror a directory tree (equivalent to /E plus /PURGE).

Well, for me, Teracopy is just a matter of copy & paste.. Simple, no need to go to a command prompt.

One the copy to the separate drive is done, then a simple fs9.exe & folder rename, & a copy back to the PC, there's an additional install.

Different strokes, I suppose!