ibleedspeed Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 Okay so it,s that time again And I am beginning to backup important programs for a fresh install of windows 7.. I have a huge GameEx install around 700gb or so.... I dont really have the extra space to copy this to another drive unless I make the space which would be intensive to say the least...My question is should I do that or just retrieve my gameEx folders from Windows.old? I do realize this would make the install insanely long but no worse then migrating it to a drive and back again... Are there any risks of losing my gameex data? cuz that would be an absolute disaster as you can imagine...i have retrieved files from windows.old many times but never anything this large or important so Im not taking any chances of losing my roms... guide me masters... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorsdad Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 I would buy a 1tb hard drive and clone the existing one. Reinstall windows on your original drive and then copy over what you need. Once you are happy that everything is copied over, clone the drive again, this way you also have a backup should your main drive fail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzleHP Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 I would backup all your roms & media then partition your drive. Have Windows on a small one at the beginning of the drive, and all your roms & media on the larger partition, this is how i do it. That way you can install Windows or restore from a backup image as often you like without having to worry about the important stuff - your roms As they will all be where you left them you can just overwrite your new GameEx install with your backup and just like magic it'll all work. (After you've set it up with your new partitions first of course)Better yet, once you have partitioned your drive and setup GameEx again pointing it to the media on your new partition, make a backup of your windows partition using something like Macrium Reflect or other HDD imaging software. Then you can return to that same state any time you please, within 10-15 minutes usually - with GameEx fully functional!It will take some effort doing it all for the first time as you'll have to essentially start from scratch, but once it's done you'll be laughing how it only takes 10 mins to start fresh each time I did it 3 times in one week a while back - i was experimenting and totally messed up Windows 3 times in a row lol but that's the beauty of a setup like this - you can do what you want with no fear of losing everything, coz it only takes 10 mins to restart These options of course won't help you with your current situation, but in my experience it pays a LOT to plan ahead in this game and you'll thank yourself in the long run Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tthurman Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 Reading your post sure makes it sound like all your eggs are in one basket, that drive fails, and there goes your whole collection. If that is in fact the case, it would definately be wise to listen to the above advise and grab a large external drive to keep a always up to date back up of your drive. If you go this route, and eSATA is an option for you, I'd recommend you seriously considering, USB drives are just soooooo sloooow!Also, since you mention windows old it sounds like you used upgrade media. Since you're reinstalling anyway I'd go ahead and install a completely fresh copy. Assuming you go the full format route, you'll get a complete check of you HDD, as opposed to the quick version which only checks the beginning and ending sectors.slmgr/rearm (method I use)Alternative methods at SevenforumsFWIW, I find the rearm method the most painless. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibleedspeed Posted October 30, 2014 Author Share Posted October 30, 2014 Reading your post sure makes it sound like all your eggs are in one basket, that drive fails, and there goes your whole collection. If that is in fact the case, it would definately be wise to listen to the above advise and grab a large external drive to keep a always up to date back up of your drive. If you go this route, and eSATA is an option for you, I'd recommend you seriously considering, USB drives are just soooooo sloooow!Also, since you mention windows old it sounds like you used upgrade media. Since you're reinstalling anyway I'd go ahead and install a completely fresh copy. Assuming you go the full format route, you'll get a complete check of you HDD, as opposed to the quick version which only checks the beginning and ending sectors.slmgr/rearm (method I use)Alternative methods at SevenforumsFWIW, I find the rearm method the most painless.Not sure what you mean by upgrade media.... when you do a complete reinstall of windows it copies your previous installation to a folder on the route of c drive called windows.old... this is not an upgrade it is a completely new installation... it keeps the copy of windows.old for a few days and then deletes it... I know this because I have done it around 100 times... I have gone down the road of seperate partitions before too and I wont do that again.... and yes it would be nice to have an external backup of my roms and that is the plan eventually...for now I am sitting on 19tb of media and it is all maxed out. I need about 10 more external drives to use for backups but can only buy 1 at a time cuz hard drives do not grow on trees...lol... the plan eventually is to max out my 6 internal hard drive bays all with 4tb drivesand then have external redundancies for all of it put away. but as of now I am still replacing and upgrading my internal drives... for now I think I will have to do it the hard way and just copy the roms to the last bit of free space I have on another dirve then copy it back once my install is done. I already have a drive cloning software "acronis true image" and I used to do it that way but eventually it lost it,s luster and I needed the extra drive for storage... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibleedspeed Posted October 30, 2014 Author Share Posted October 30, 2014 I would backup all your roms & media then partition your drive. Have Windows on a small one at the beginning of the drive, and all your roms & media on the larger partition, this is how i do it. That way you can install Windows or restore from a backup image as often you like without having to worry about the important stuff - your roms As they will all be where you left them you can just overwrite your new GameEx install with your backup and just like magic it'll all work. (After you've set it up with your new partitions first of course)Better yet, once you have partitioned your drive and setup GameEx again pointing it to the media on your new partition, make a backup of your windows partition using something like Macrium Reflect or other HDD imaging software. Then you can return to that same state any time you please, within 10-15 minutes usually - with GameEx fully functional!It will take some effort doing it all for the first time as you'll have to essentially start from scratch, but once it's done you'll be laughing how it only takes 10 mins to start fresh each time I did it 3 times in one week a while back - i was experimenting and totally messed up Windows 3 times in a row lol but that's the beauty of a setup like this - you can do what you want with no fear of losing everything, coz it only takes 10 mins to restart These options of course won't help you with your current situation, but in my experience it pays a LOT to plan ahead in this game and you'll thank yourself in the long run Having windows on a "small" partition simpy isnt an option my windows installs usually end up around 1.5tb with programs,games and now gameex.... I went down the road of trying to install it all to other drives and it never worked out.... too many programs and games that really need to be installed to programsx86 folder where they belong or they have complications... very same reason ssd,s are useless to me... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tthurman Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 (edited) Not sure what you mean by upgrade media.... when you do a complete reinstall of windows it copies your previous installation to a folder on the route of c drive called windows.old...Not if you install it on a freshly formatted drive, or new drive.As far as upgrade media, when you upgrade from say XP (which can't be upgraded anyway, you get the windows.old folder). Judging from your comments this is also the case when you reinstall from a previous installation of the same OS, without deleting the existing partition(s).When I do a fresh install, I do it with nothing on the drive, I don't want any old files of any sort left on it just on the outside chance Windows decides it "needs" something. In a normal scenario I would be doing this to solve a problem, one that could very well be left in the windows.old directory. There are some instances where you don't have this option, 8 to 8.1 for instance, but windows 8 has a timer that will delete it in four weeks.<edit> without a backup method for all your sets, the method I'm describing is obviously not an option. I understand your dilemma as far as back up drives, but it pretty much goes without say hat putting that much trust into drives represents a huge risk in itself. Edited October 31, 2014 by tthurman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts