I haven't given this much thought till recently. I realize that my system is just about 3 years old, and although it is running fine so far, I wonder what I would do if something really went catastrophically wrong such as a complete hard drive crash and failure. I mean, I have FS set up just as well as I think I can with its many tweaks and add-on files. I also have backed up my download directory from time to time. My question is, should I think about backing up anything in case the unthinkable happens?? I guess I would obviously back up my FS9 directory, but what else would I consider saving so that if the worst happened, I could easily reload everything. I thought abut doing this once before, but I seem to recall that when I tried a possible save in Roxio CD creator, it said I would need 20 or 30 disks! All I ever copied were some audio CDs and some data files and downloaded files. Thanks.

One nice inexpensive backup option is an external hard drive. Check your local newspaper ads for sales. I purchased a 120gb drive and use it to backup all my important files. Digital camrea files, financial info, flightsim addons, etc. You could even keep a complete backup of your fs2004 folder. A high ranking IT manager at my company always says one thing about hardware, "everything will fail, it is just a matter of when". That's the mindset you need to have. You hope your hard drive lives longer than you need it, but you never know. CD backups are obviously too small to be useful and even DVD discs don't often hold enough. That's why I like the external drive, just remember to regularly copy your important files over.

Flaps, you raise a good point. Many 'IT pros' that I talk with say the safe life of any given hardrive, if regularly used, is about five years. Whether or not this is an accurate average estimation, it does highlight the sense of backing stuff up regularly. But FS, with add-ons, is so big. Mine is 80GB. How, then?A second hard drive has to be the way, internal (cheaper) or external. When my main drive crashed last year, I took lots of advice, most of it bad. The manufacturer themselves told me I should simply reformat it, thereby losing everything. My local computer shop guru, however, said "What?! Buy another hard drive, install Windows on it, boot with that as primary harddrive, and then rescue your data if you can from the other drive" For me, that worked a treat, as my particular problem was operating system related. And now I can back up everything onto the second drive. But it hightlighted to me that I should have done this anyway, way back, given that most computers can accept the second drive without problem; no point waiting for the inevitable crash, or the virus from ####.MarkEDIT: Why on earth is H-E-L-L one of 'those' words? It's in The Bible, isn't it?Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

drives go bad, its just the way they are built, they spin so fast and are very fragile. Some companies make cheaper products that break easier. I would recommend an external drive too, but even that can go bad. The best option is a DVD-RW drive and disks to burn your data to them. Store these discs in safe places and you will have a good backup option.At work we use quantum tape drives, but at home, I use a trusty Lacie Porsche firewire drive

The mechanical workings of the drive will wear and tear as time goes on. It's a very good idea to back up regularly. There are plenty of programs for doing so automatically, some of which will make a boot-able clone of your drive so in the event of anything physically going wrong with the disk, you just boot from the other. Hey presto ... no headaches. If you have a spare internal bay, I'd go for a nice, fast 250Gb+ hard drive. That way, you don't have to worry about connecting the external all the time and everything's in the one tower. I really like the idea of having 2 or more internal drives. Saves a lot of hassle in the long run and it's convenient for storing other stuff if you have a few partitions. Niceee.I'm super duper paranoid when it comes to backing up. I have 2 external backups. Both are updated each week, or at least I try to.Never had a hard drive failure, but I like to think I'll be prepared should that situation occur.(Dam mechanical weathering)EDIT: Just to add; It might also be a good idea to pick up a power surge plug adaptor thingie. hard drives can get data wiped in the event of a surge like during an electrical storm. I think it has happened to a few members on this board actually. They aren't that expensive, and with extra drive as backup, you should be fairly well covered.

yep I recommend a surge protector as well. A UPS is the best option to allow you to shut the computer down normally after a surge or a power outage, certain ones come with programs that will automatically shut the computer down for you if the power fails after a certain amount of time

EDIT: Why on earth is H-E-L-L one of 'those' words? It's in The Bible, isn't it?Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIMMark,The word "H-E-L-L" really isn't in the original languages that the Bible was written in. The ORIGINAL Hebrew word that is translated in many Bibles as "h-e-l-l" is "She'ohl" and the Greek word used in the so-called "New Testament' is "Hai'des". In most languages there are no words that convey the precise meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words. However, both words have the same meaning: the common grave of the dead, the figurative location which refers to the condition of the dead, that of being unconscience or asleep in the grave. Some translatons use several different words for Sheol and Hades, like "grave", "pit" and "h-e-l-l". The Bible book of Ecclesiastes chapter 9 vrs. 5 & 10 clearly show that the dead are unconscience and not being tormented in a literal fire. I know that this is not a forum for relgious discussion but I felt the need to address your question.

In the greek mythology HAIDES or HADES was the King of the Underworld and the god of the dead. He was the son of CHRONOS (son of OURANOS and GAIA) and RHEA, and brother of ZEUS. As this is way OOT, I won'nt expand any further, but if you have some interest in the greek mythology, here is a site in english where could go, starting with Hades http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Haides.htmlJ.J.JJ StruyfBraine-L'AlleudBelgium

Best thing to do to extend the life of your harddrive is to never let it spin down.That means NO powersaving modes for your PC, and never turn the PC off.My system gets turned off ONLY if I leave home for over a week, and then not always.I've drives in it that are still going strong that are now 8 years old.They're slow, they're reliable, they're now out of warranty (yes, back then you got 5 years of warranty on a drive, not the puny 1 year you get now on most drives which tells something about the trust manufacturers have in their own products these days).People always seem to want the fastest drives on the market.My advise: don't do that. Buy slower drives, they last longer.Sure your loading times will be a few seconds slower, but if your drive lasts 10 years instead of 2 it's worth it.

Always have a Plan B!!!My plan B is having two computers neworked together.My 2nd computer is an old 200Mhz intel celeron with Mandrake Linux installed on it. Basically I back up all my addons, photos, emails and work onto the 2nd machine. I'm also able to access the internet from it. Basically I can get on with everything except playing FS.If something horribly wrong did happen with my main PC, I have a nifty little rescue CD with a linux distro called Knoppix. Basically a full linux operating system loads itself from the CD into memory with a "windows" style environment. You can access the contents of your harddrives from that and have some chance of rescueing important files, or even restoring your PC.Anthony Dyer

Well I back up all my important files on cd. Yes, it amounts to quite a lot but at least I know that they are safe. An external hard drive is possibly a better option but what happens if that goes wrong? All your data is lost. At least with multiple cd's you dramatically reduce the chance of losing everything.In addition, I always put the pc on standby if I'm not going to use it for a short period and switch it off if I'm not going to use it for a few hours or more. This may reduce the life of the hd but I see no point in keeping something running that I'm not currently using.

Your post hasn't really answered Mark's question though, has it?He asked "Why is it banned on here"?Dave T. .........On the Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/

"My question is, should I think about backing up anything in case the unthinkable happens??"You should always think-If my harddrive were to crash and burn right *NOW*, what would I loose?It's not a question of if it will happen so much as when.So obviously you want to back up personal files such as documents, photos and anything else. As for FS itself, the FS folder tends to be too big to make it possible to backup the whole folder. Zipping the aircraft folder makes it MUCH smaller. Also, things like mesh and photosceneries take huge amounts of space so you may be able to skip those and reinstall from your CD's/installation files.It's also a good idea to get a DVD writer since a DVD has room for many times more than a CD. A 25-pack spindle of DVD-R disks is quite cheap these days and gives you over 100GB of storage.

This is obviously off topic, but why do many Christians believe in ####, as in when you die and have not been saved you burn in #### forever?RH

Most or all religions have a concept of eternal damnation for those who don't serve the deity faithfully.It's nothing specific to Christianity, the concept existed in Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Judea, and many other places.