With just adding UTX-USA, UTX-Canada, and GEXnhanced to my FSX portfolio, I thought it was a very good time to do a complete back-up of my hard drive. So, (whew...) it just completed with a full verify, and my system is safe against software loss.I thought to ask when was the last time YOU did a full back-up of your hard drive and protect yourself against software loss, and the tens-of-hours to try and find it all, CD's and floppy,source it upon the Net, and then once again load it onto your system?I had a hard-drive failure once, as well as a loss (couldn't find a piece of software again upon the Net)of a valued software...and now make sure that I back-up my system every 60 days per year.Just knowing that your entire system is backed up onto a DIFFERENT (for me, a USB drive) drive and locked away safe from the rest of the system location brings a true sense of relief.If you do not have a separate hard drive with enough capacity to back up all your drives, then truly----THAT----should be your next purchase, and not more flight software.Trust me, that this is good advice! Ask anyone who crashed a hard drive, or couldn't locate an 'older' or misplaced piece of valued software. How do I know? Don't ask....but lesson learned.Mitch

I back up all the time. I am paranoid about losing anything, I've seen hard drives crash xxxxx times.I do a combo of straight file-copy to an external hd, and some goes into Acronis images.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Acronis... the best computer related money I ever spent. And I'm reminded of that fact once a week. :-)

I just backup my personal data on DVD's...Is there a trial for acronis?I did have an external HDD but fried the usb connector lol, so now it is actually in my PC using the SATA.... that has all my pictures on it, plus I have "hard copies" on CD/DVD'sI only have a few gigs of word docs and files I care about. As long as pics and files are safe, the games and crap can go.... lol

Drive Snapshot.. fast, doesn't have an install, just an executable. The only way to backup.

>I just backup my personal data on DVD's...>>Is there a trial for acronis?Seagate has their free DiskWizard, which uses Acronis. I don't know if it's been limited for Seagate drives as I happen to have several Seagate drives. It works great for cloning/imaging. I just built a new box and after doing the full install of everything made a cloned disk. Here's a fun twist: after using DiskWiz to clone, I just eliminated all other drives from the boot priority list in the BIOS, and also use DriveLocker (password-protected freeware disk-hiding applet) so that I can boot to either drive and the other cloned copy is invisible in Explorer. Seems to be keeping everything separate no problem.Noel

I back up personal data regularly but don't see the point backing up, for example, my current installation of FSX since I have the originals and can just reinstall it - granted at the cost of time.Unless you also back up your entire Windows install then, in the event of a failure, that FSX backup is not really going to be of much benefit anyway without all the registry keys relating to it and the addons so you'd be forced to reinstall over the top anyway.

>I back up personal data regularly but don't see the point>backing up, for example, my current installation of FSX since>I have the originals and can just reinstall it - granted at>the cost of time.>>Unless you also back up your entire Windows install then, in>the event of a failure, that FSX backup is not really going to>be of much benefit anyway without all the registry keys>relating to it and the addons so you'd be forced to reinstall>over the top anyway.-------------------------You're absolutely right! If you don't also back up your SYSTEM STATE, then you ONLY have certain options open to you.I do a full C: backup with, and including the O.P. SYSTEM STATE. That way, after a fresh XPsp2 install, all I have to do to get my 'full system and software' up and running, is to do a complete retrieve. All my proper SYSTEM STATE (the O.P.) will be back, up and running as well. It takes about 4.5 hours to do my initial backup, and then every 2 months, I do an incremental.

"Acronis... the best computer related money I ever spent"Agreed!RegardsMike :)