Backing up your files
It's always a good idea to make backup copies of your hard disk,
in case you ever have a hardware failure or software problem that
requires replacing or reformatting your hard disk.
My first recommendation would be to use a good backup program or
disk imaging program that saves everything on your system. I
consider that to be the safest approach, because it guarantees
that you won't accidentally forget something important.
But some people prefer to do manual backups, in which case you'll
want to know which PinballY files you need to back up. Or, there
might be times when you just want to create a snapshot of
your full PinballY setup. So for those situations, here's a list
of all of the files needed to re-create your PinballY setup:
- Settings.txt in the main PinballY folder (stores
all of your program option settings)
- GameStats.csv in the main PinballY folder (stores
portions of the game metadata)
- Your entire Media folder tree
- Your entire Databases folder tree
The Media and Databases folder locations depend on
your option settings. See Files & Folders
for full details, but here's the quick summary:
- If you're using the "Share with PinballX" option, both folders
will be in your PinballX install folder
- If you're not sharing with PinballX, both folders will be in
your PinballY install folder by default
- However, you can override the default locations in the settings -
if you're not sure, the Folders page in the options dialog
will show you the current settings
PinballY doesn't store any settings in the registry, so you don't
need to worry about that. (Many other programs do use registry
settings to store user information, though, which is one of the
reasons I think it's a good idea to use a proper backup program
or disk imaging program, rather than making backups manually.
A "real" backup program will usually include a full capture
of the registry as an automatic part of the backup set.)
You don't need to back up the PinballY program files
themselves, since you can always just do a fresh install to
re-create those. But if you're not on a tight space budget for your
backup media, the simplest thing is to just make a copy of
your entire PinballY folder tree (plus your complete PinballX
folder tree, if you're sharing media with PinballX).
Recommended backup practices
This has nothing to do with PinballY, but as long as we're on the
subject, I can't resist the urge to make some recommendations
about backup practices in general. I see too many
posts on the forums from people who had to re-build their
systems from scratch after a hard disk failure or Windows
crash. It's clear that a lot of people skip backups for
their pin cabs. Don't be one of them!
Here are some key things I'd look for in a backup setup:
- It should be automatic. It should run on a schedule
so that you don't have to remember to run it yourself. If
you have to run it manually, chances are that you won't think
about it for long stretches.
- The media should be remote - not physically
connected computer you're backing up. Ideally, it should be
off-site in a cloud service, since that gives you complete
physical isolation. At the very
least, it should be on an external hard disk that you don't
keep connected to the machine, or on a separate computer
on your home network. A hardware failure or Windows crash
could corrupt every disk connected to the computer, and
a malware attack could trash every connected disk. Physical
isolation is the only way to be sure the backup media are
safe against whatever disaster hits the subject system.
- It should be versioned. Versioning is critical
for malware protection - if you discover an infection or
lose everything in a ransomware attack, it'll do you no good
to have a backup copy of the infected files. You'll need to
be able to go back in time to an earlier version before the
infection. Versioning is also an extremely nice safety net
when you're making configuration changes, because it lets
you go back in time to an earlier working setup if you mess
something up.
- It should do a whole-disk scan. If you have to manually
choose the files that get backed up, you'll inevitably miss
something important.
- It should include the Windows registry as part of the
backup, since Windows itself and many application programs
store a lot of important configuration data there.