Best FSX backup strategy?

[Z-AZ1USN]

Well, what I have just done today is to make image backups of my entire C drive and F drive (dedicated 300GB velociraptor) onto a WD MyPassport 500GB USB drive.


You make my point here when I read where you are backing up your entire drives..."C" and "F"
hence the term "saving baby and bathwater" by saving C drive (with registry keys) and F drive (with FSX). You did provide that much "detail" however,
And again I say, what is desired, is a backup of the FSX drive and a set of exported FSX-specific Registry keys to append/add to the current registry...(something that doesn't require backing up and restoring the entire C drive and thus the entire registry)

Now I would think backing up just the registry albeit inclusive of ALL installed programs
(FSX and non FSX ) would be a tad bit less drastic and involved then backing up the entire "C"
in addition to and image of your "F". If FSX were installed on the "C" where all the registry keys are then things would be simpler to restore, Yes?

I don't think anyone has a "workaround" to this conundrum.....

 

[MarkH]

If FSX were installed on the "C" where all the registry keys are then things would be simpler to restore, Yes?

Er, no. Or rather, 'yes in a very trivial sense, but...'. There are several good reasons why FSX should not be on the C drive, which I won't bother to go into here.

You have hit the nail on the head when you talk about the importance of simplicity, but you are going about it the wrong way. That's why you are wrong when you say I don't go into detail, because there is no more detail. Only one thing is simpler and less involved than making two image files and then restoring them, and that is making one image file and restoring it. See above.

I am working on a video blog about this so I'm not going to say too much more here. For my situation, where I have a PC dedicated to FSX, the only penalty for keeping it simple is a bit of extra disk space and that the backup step takes a bit longer. The payoff that it I can be confident it will work. I can also test it out with a high degree of confidence because there are no variables.