How to backup FSX

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hey guys, I'd like a bit of help here. I have Win7 64bit on a single 64gb SSD and FSX on another 265gb SSD. My question is, if I want to make a safety backup of all this can I simply make a copy of each of the drives and place them in separate folders on a third HD? In other words, FSX copied from the SSD saved to a folder on drive 3 and Win 7 and the entire contents of the HD copied and saved to another folder on drive 3. Is this straightforward, or do I need to consider something else?

[Andydigital 93]

You need proper backup software to image the drives to a backup drive, its really not as simple as copying folders to another drive. There are registry entries to think of and all sorts of other OS dependencies and side by side manifests to take into consideration too, that's why its so easy to mess up an FSX install if you are not careful. I personally use Norton Ghost 15 to do my backups, its easy to use and not too expensive, other folk may recommend Acronis True Image but I've never had any personal experience with it other than briefly looking at a demo version of it, I wasn't impressed.

[Kosta 122]

Hey guys, I'd like a bit of help here. I have Win7 64bit on a single 64gb SSD and FSX on another 265gb SSD. My question is, if I want to make a safety backup of all this can I simply make a copy of each of the drives and place them in separate folders on a third HD? In other words, FSX copied from the SSD saved to a folder on drive 3 and Win 7 and the entire contents of the HD copied and saved to another folder on drive 3. Is this straightforward, or do I need to consider something else?

Bad idea. You can't save things like that in Windows (programs). You need imaging - a process of partition-saving. Basically all such programs do is make an image, much like the one of the DVD or CD, onto another disk - ergo: backup.I use Acronis True Image, but I'm sure there are also others. Acronis True Image is definitely worth it, it has saved me numerous times.EDIT: Andy, by couple of seconds probably!

[Andydigital 93]

By the way Norton Ghost is the only piece of software owned or made by Symantec that I will touch with a barge pole anything else made by them is usually utter......

[Kosta 122]

By the way Norton Ghost is the only piece of software owned or made by Symantec that I will touch with a barge pole anything else made by them is usually utter......

The 2nd thing is why I went far away from Symantec. No product of Symantec is ever again going to touch my computer.

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Thanks guys, that's answered my question perfectly...

[N1G 88]

Hi,I use Acronis. Great stuff and never had an issue. I back up both OS and FSX drives.Bob

[PIC007 82]

Reference this old post.... works great...http://forum.avsim.net/topic/291959-do-you-have-fsx-insurance/

[magnetite 38]

I had some issues with restoring Windows from an image onto an SSD. SSDs have to be properly aligned and from what I heard restoring via a drive image can actually reduce performance. Since your FSX is on it's own SSD it might be different. My read/write speeds went down after restoring from an image.

[Andydigital 93]

If the image was taken from an SSD and is going back on an SSD when you restore from a backup it will of course be fine. If you are restoring a HDD image to an SSD then most likely it won't be aligned properly, it will still work though, just not a quickly as it could if it was aligned correctly.

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Thanks everyone. Andy, I agree about Norton, I had a terrible experience some years ago with Norton AV, it screwed with my registry big time, so I think I will turn to Acronis 2012. You mentioned about aligned images on the HD?? I haven't heard of this before, can you elaboarte a little please. I will have two SSD drives, one for FSX and one for OS and backing them both up to a single 500Gb USB HD. Are you saying that the performance with this set up will be inferior if I ever restore the image from the backup HD which was originally taken from the SSD?

[Andydigital 93]

Backing up an image from a SSD to a HDD for later restoration back to a SSD is fine, just do not restore an image created from a HDD to a SDD otherwise performance will be below optimum. As I said before it would still work but it wont be as fast as it could be. Imaging from a HDD to a SDD is not something you are doing anyway Howard so no need to worry.

[Kosta 122]

Backing up an image from a SSD to a HDD for later restoration back to a SSD is fine, just do not restore an image created from a HDD to a SDD otherwise performance will be below optimum. As I said before it would still work but it wont be as fast as it could be. Imaging from a HDD to a SDD is not something you are doing anyway Howard so no need to worry.

What would one do in that case? Say I have a FSX and Windows HDDs which I would like to port to SSDs. What would I do?

[Andydigital 93]

You need to get the image realigned for the SSD, I've never done it personally, I've just read about the problems and that realignment is what is required, you will have to Google how to do that, it may even be that Acronis automatically does this now, it would certainly make a good selling point.

[Kosta 122]

OK, I see there is a suite from Paragon to do that automatically, there is a Migration Software from it. Acronis doesn't seem to have it.